1815-1834
in writing these pages, which, for the want of a better name, i shall be fain to call the autobiography of so insignificant a person as myself, it will not be so much my intention to speak of the little details of my private life, as of what i, and perhaps others round me, have done in literature; of my failures and successes such as they have been, and their causes; and of the opening which a literary career offers to men and women for the earning of their bread. and yet the garrulity of old age, and the aptitude of a man’s mind to recur to the passages of his own life, will, i know, tempt me to say something of myself — nor, without doing so, should i know how to throw my matter into any recognised and intelligible form. that i, or any man, should tell everything of himself, i hold to be impossible. who could endure to own the doing of a mean thing? who is there that has done none? but this i protest:— that nothing that i say shall be untrue. i will set down naught in malice; nor will i give to myself, or others, honour which i do not believe to have been fairly won. my boyhood was, i think, as unhappy as that of a young gentleman could well be, my misfortunes arising from a mixture of poverty and gentle standing on the part of my father, and from an utter want on my part of the juvenile manhood which enables some boys to hold up their heads even among the distresses which such a position is sure to produce.
i was born in 1815, in keppel street, russell square; and while a baby, was carried down to harrow, where my father had built a house on a large farm which, in an evil hour he took on a long lease from lord northwick. that farm was the grave of all my father’s hopes, ambition, and prosperity, the cause of my mother’s sufferings, and of those of her children, and perhaps the director of her destiny and of ours. my father had been a wykamist and a fellow of new college, and winchester was the destination of my brothers and myself; but as he had friends among the masters at harrow, and as the school offered an education almost gratuitous to children living in the parish, he, with a certain aptitude to do things differently from others, which accompanied him throughout his life, determined to use that august seminary as “t’other school” for winchester, and sent three of us there, one after the other, at the age of seven. my father at this time was a chancery barrister practising in london, occupying dingy, almost suicidal chambers, at no. 23 old square, lincoln’s inn — chambers which on one melancholy occasion did become absolutely suicidal. 1 he was, as i have been informed by those quite competent to know, an excellent and most conscientious lawyer, but plagued with so bad a temper, that he drove the attorneys from him. in his early days he was a man of some small fortune and of higher hopes. these stood so high at the time of my birth, that he was felt to be entitled to a country house, as well as to that in keppel street; and in order that he might build such a residence, he took the farm. this place he called julians, and the land runs up to the foot of the hill on which the school and the church stand — on the side towards london. things there went much against him; the farm was ruinous, and i remember that we all regarded the lord northwick of those days as a cormorant who was eating us up. my father’s clients deserted him. he purchased various dark gloomy chambers in and about chancery lane, and his purchases always went wrong. then, as a final crushing blow, and old uncle, whose heir he was to have been, married and had a family! the house in london was let; and also the house he built at harrow, from which he descended to a farmhouse on the land, which i have endeavoured to make known to some readers under the name of orley farm. this place, just as it was when we lived there, is to be seen in the frontispiece to the first edition of that novel, having the good fortune to be delineated by no less a pencil than that of john millais.
1 a pupil of his destroyed himself in the rooms.
my two elder brothers had been sent as day-boarders to harrow school from the bigger house, and may probably have been received among the aristocratic crowd — not on equal terms, because a day-boarder at harrow in those days was never so received — but at any rate as other day-boarders. i do not suppose that they were well treated, but i doubt whether they were subjected to the ignominy which i endured. i was only seven, and i think that boys at seven are now spared among their more considerate seniors. i was never spared; and was not even allowed to run to and fro between our house and the school without a daily purgatory. no doubt my appearance was against me. i remember well, when i was still the junior boy in the school, dr. butler, the head-master, stopping me in the street, and asking me, with all the clouds of jove upon his brow and the thunder in his voice, whether it was possible that harrow school was disgraced by so disreputably dirty a boy as i! oh, what i felt at that moment! but i could not look my feelings. i do not doubt that i was dirty — but i think that he was cruel. he must have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. perhaps he did not recognise me by my face.
at this time i was three years at harrow; and, as far as i can remember, i was the junior boy in the school when i left it.
then i was sent to a private school at sunbury, kept by arthur drury. this, i think, must have been done in accordance with the advice of henry drury, who was my tutor at harrow school, and my father’s friend, and who may probably have expressed an opinion that my juvenile career was not proceeding in a satisfactory manner at harrow. to sunbury i went, and during the two years i was there, though i never had any pocket-money, and seldom had much in the way of clothes, i lived more nearly on terms of equality with other boys than at any other period during my very prolonged school-days. even here, i was always in disgrace. i remember well how, on one occasion, four boys were selected as having been the perpetrators of some nameless horror. what it was, to this day i cannot even guess; but i was one of the four, innocent as a babe, but adjudged to have been the guiltiest of the guilty. we each had to write out a sermon, and my sermon was the longest of the four. during the whole of one term-time we were helped last at every meal. we were not allowed to visit the playground till the sermon was finished. mine was only done a day or two before the holidays. mrs. drury, when she saw us, shook her head with pitying horror. there were ever so many other punishments accumulated on our heads. it broke my heart, knowing myself to be innocent, and suffering also under the almost equally painful feeling that the other three — no doubt wicked boys — were the curled darlings of the school, who would never have selected me to share their wickedness with them. i contrived to learn, from words that fell from mr. drury, that he condemned me because i, having come from a public school, might be supposed to be the leader of wickedness! on the first day of the next term he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong. with all a stupid boy’s slowness, i said nothing; and he had not the courage to carry reparation further. all that was fifty years ago, and it burns me now as though it were yesterday. what lily-livered curs those boys must have been not to have told the truth! — at any rate as far as i was concerned. i remember their names well, and almost wish to write them here.
when i was twelve there came the vacancy at winchester college which i was destined to fill. my two elder brothers had gone there, and the younger had been taken away, being already supposed to have lost his chance of new college. it had been one of the great ambitions of my father’s life that his three sons, who lived to go to winchester, should all become fellows of new college. but that suffering man was never destined to have an ambition gratified. we all lost the prize which he struggled with infinite labour to put within our reach. my eldest brother all but achieved it, and afterwards went to oxford, taking three exhibitions from the school, though he lost the great glory of a wykamist. he has since made himself well known to the public as a writer in connection with all italian subjects. he is still living as i now write. but my other brother died early.
while i was at winchester my father’s affairs went from bad to worse. he gave up his practice at the bar, and, unfortunate that he was, took another farm. it is odd that a man should conceive — and in this case a highly educated and a very clever man — that farming should be a business in which he might make money without any special education or apprenticeship. perhaps of all trades it is the one in which an accurate knowledge of what things should be done, and the best manner of doing them, is most necessary. and it is one also for success in which a sufficient capital is indispensable. he had no knowledge, and, when he took this second farm, no capital. this was the last step preparatory to his final ruin.
soon after i had been sent to winchester my mother went to america, taking with her my brother henry and my two sisters, who were then no more than children. this was, i think, in 1827. i have no clear knowledge of her object, or of my father’s; but i believe that he had an idea that money might be made by sending goods — little goods, such as pin-cushions, pepper-boxes, and pocket-knives — out to the still unfurnished states; and that she conceived that an opening might be made for my brother henry by erecting some bazaar or extended shop in one of the western cities. whence the money came i do not know, but the pocket-knives and the pepper-boxes were bought and the bazaar built. i have seen it since in the town of cincinnati — a sorry building! but i have been told that in those days it was an imposing edifice. my mother went first, with my sisters and second brother. then my father followed them, taking my elder brother before he went to oxford. but there was an interval of some year and a half during which he and i were in winchester together.
over a period of forty years, since i began my manhood at a desk in the post office, i and my brother, thomas adolphus, have been fast friends. there have been hot words between us, for perfect friendship bears and allows hot words. few brothers have had more of brotherhood. but in those schooldays he was, of all my foes, the worst. in accordance with the practice of the college, which submits, or did then submit, much of the tuition of the younger boys from the elder, he was my tutor; and in his capacity of teacher and ruler, he had studied the theories of draco. i remember well how he used to exact obedience after the manner of that lawgiver. hang a little boy for stealing apples, he used to say, and other little boys will not steal apples. the doctrine was already exploded elsewhere, but he stuck to it with conservative energy. the result was that, as a part of his daily exercise, he thrashed me with a big stick. that such thrashings should have been possible at a school as a continual part of one’s daily life, seems to me to argue a very ill condition of school discipline.
at this period i remember to have passed one set of holidays — the midsummer holidays — in my father’s chambers in lincoln’s inn. there was often a difficulty about the holidays — as to what should be done with me. on this occasion my amusement consisted in wandering about among those old deserted buildings, and in reading shakespeare out of a bi-columned edition, which is still among my books. it was not that i had chosen shakespeare, but that there was nothing else to read.
after a while my brother left winchester and accompanied my father to america. then another and a different horror fell to my fate. my college bills had not been paid, and the school tradesmen who administered to the wants of the boys were told not to extend their credit to me. boots, waistcoats, and pocket-handkerchiefs, which, with some slight superveillance, were at the command of other scholars, were closed luxuries to me. my schoolfellows of course knew that it was so, and i became a pariah. it is the nature of boys to be cruel. i have sometimes doubted whether among each other they do usually suffer much, one from the other’s cruelty; but i suffered horribly! i could make no stand against it. i had no friend to whom i could pour out my sorrows. i was big, and awkward, and ugly, and, i have no doubt, sulked about in a most unattractive manner. of course i was ill-dressed and dirty. but ah! how well i remember all the agonies of my young heart; how i considered whether i should always be alone; whether i could not find my way up to the top of that college tower, and from thence put an end to everything? and a worse thing came than the stoppage of the supplies from the shopkeepers. every boy had a shilling a week pocket-money, which we called battels, and which was advanced to us out of the pocket of the second master. on one awful day the second master announced to me that my battels would be stopped. he told me the reason — the battels for the last half-year had not been repaid; and he urged his own unwillingness to advance the money. the loss of a shilling a week would not have been much — even though pocket-money from other sources never reached me — but that the other boys all knew it! every now and again, perhaps three or four times in a half-year, these weekly shillings were given to certain servants of the college, in payment, it may be presumed, for some extra services. and now, when it came to the turn of any servant, he received sixty-nine shillings instead of seventy, and the cause of the defalcation was explained to him. i never saw one of those servants without feeling i had picked his pocket.
when i had been at winchester something over three years, my father returned to england and took me away. whether this was done because of the expense, or because my chance of new college was supposed to have passed away, i do not know. as a fact, i should, i believe, have gained the prize, as there occurred in my year an exceptional number of vacancies. but it would have served me nothing, as there would have been no funds for my maintenance at the university till i should have entered in upon the fruition of the founder’s endowment, and my career at oxford must have been unfortunate.
when i left winchester, i had three more years of school before me, having as yet endured nine. my father at this time having left my mother and sisters with my younger brother in america, took himself to live at a wretched tumble-down farmhouse on the second farm he had hired! and i was taken there with him. it was nearly three miles from harrow, at harrow weald, but in the parish; and from this house i was again sent to that school as a day-boarder. let those who know what is the usual appearance and what the usual appurtenances of a boy at such a school, consider what must have been my condition among them, with a daily walk of twelve miles through the lanes, added to the other little troubles and labours of a school life!
perhaps the eighteen months which i passed in this condition, walking to and fro on those miserably dirty lanes, was the worst period of my life. i was now over fifteen, and had come to an age at which i could appreciate at its full the misery of expulsion from all social intercourse. i had not only no friends, but was despised by all my companions. the farmhouse was not only no more than a farmhouse, but was one of those farmhouses which seem always to be in danger of falling into the neighbouring horse-pond. as it crept downwards from house to stables, from stables to barns, from barns to cowsheds, and from cowsheds to dungheaps, one could hardly tell where one began and the other ended! there was a parlour in which my father lived, shut up among big books; but i passed my most jocund hours in the kitchen, making innocent love to the bailiff’s daughter. the farm kitchen might be very well through the evening, when the horrors of the school were over; but it all added to the cruelty of the days. a sizar at a cambridge college, or a bible-clerk at oxford, has not pleasant days, or used not to have them half a century ago; but his position was recognised, and the misery was measured. i was a sizar at a fashionable school, a condition never premeditated. what right had a wretched farmer’s boy, reeking from a dunghill, to sit next to the sons of peers — or much worse still, next to the sons of big tradesmen who made their ten thousand a year? the indignities i endured are not to be described. as i look back it seems to me that all hands were turned against me — those of masters as well as boys. i was allowed to join in no plays. nor did i learn anything — for i was taught nothing. the only expense, except that of books, to which a house-boarder was then subject, was the fee to a tutor, amounting, i think, to ten guineas. my tutor took me without the fee; but when i heard him declare the fact in the pupil-room before the boys, i hardly felt grateful for the charity. i was never a coward, and cared for a thrashing as little as any boy, but one cannot make a stand against the acerbities of three hundred tyrants without a moral courage of which at that time i possessed none. i know that i skulked, and was odious to the eyes of those i admired and envied. at last i was driven to rebellion, and there came a great fight — at the end of which my opponent had to be taken home for a while. if these words be ever printed, i trust that some schoolfellow of those days may still be left alive who will be able to say that, in claiming this solitary glory of my school-days, i am not making a false boast.
i wish i could give some adequate picture of the gloom of that farmhouse. my elder brother — tom as i must call him in my narrative, though the world, i think, knows him best as adolphus — was at oxford. my father and i lived together, he having no means of living except what came from the farm. my memory tells me that he was always in debt to his landlord and to the tradesmen he employed. of self-indulgence no one could accuse him. our table was poorer, i think, than that of the bailiff who still hung on to our shattered fortunes. the furniture was mean and scanty. there was a large rambling kitchen-garden, but no gardener; and many times verbal incentives were made to me — generally, i fear, in vain — to get me to lend a hand at digging and planting. into the hayfields on holidays i was often compelled to go — not, i fear, with much profit. my father’s health was very bad. during the last ten years of his life, he spent nearly the half of his time in bed, suffering agony from sick headaches. but he was never idle unless when suffering. he had at this time commenced a work — an encyclopedia ecclesiastica, as he called it — on which he laboured to the moment of his death. it was his ambition to describe all ecclesiastical terms, including the denominations of every fraternity of monks and every convent of nuns, with all their orders and subdivisions. under crushing disadvantages, with few or no books of reference, with immediate access to no library, he worked at his most ungrateful task with unflagging industry. when he died, three numbers out of eight had been published by subscription; and are now, i fear, unknown, and buried in the midst of that huge pile of futile literature, the building up of which has broken so many hearts.
and my father, though he would try, as it were by a side wind, to get a useful spurt of work out of me, either in the garden or in the hay-field, had constantly an eye to my scholastic improvement. from my very babyhood, before those first days at harrow, i had to take my place alongside of him as he shaved at six o’clock in the morning, and say my early rules from the latin grammar, or repeat the greek alphabet; and was obliged at these early lessons to hold my head inclined towards him, so that in the event of guilty fault, he might be able to pull my hair without stopping his razor or dropping his shaving-brush. no father was ever more anxious for the education of his children, though i think none ever knew less how to go about the work. of amusement, as far as i can remember, he never recognised the need. he allowed himself no distraction, and did not seem to think it was necessary to a child. i cannot bethink me of aught that he ever did for my gratification; but for my welfare — for the welfare of us all — he was willing to make any sacrifice. at this time, in the farmhouse at harrow weald, he could not give his time to teach me, for every hour that he was not in the fields was devoted to his monks and nuns; but he would require me to sit at a table with lexicon and gradus before me. as i look back on my resolute idleness and fixed determination to make no use whatever of the books thus thrust upon me, or of the hours, and as i bear in mind the consciousness of great energy in after-life, i am in doubt whether my nature is wholly altered, or whether his plan was wholly bad. in those days he never punished me, though i think i grieved him much by my idleness; but in passion he knew not what he did, and he has knocked me down with the great folio bible which he always used. in the old house were the two first volumes of cooper’s novel, called the prairie, a relic — probably a dishonest relic — of some subscription to hookham’s library. other books of the kind there was none. i wonder how many dozen times i read those two first volumes.
it was the horror of those dreadful walks backwards and forwards which made my life so bad. what so pleasant, what so sweet, as a walk along an english lane, when the air is sweet and the weather fine, and when there is a charm in walking? but here were the same lanes four times a day, in wet and dry, in heat and summer, with all the accompanying mud and dust, and with disordered clothes. i might have been known among all the boys at a hundred yards’ distance by my boots and trousers — and was conscious at all times that i was so known. i remembered constantly that address from dr. butler when i was a little boy. dr. longley might with equal justice have said the same thing any day — only that dr. longley never in his life was able to say an ill-natured word. dr. butler only became dean of peterborough, but his successor lived to be archbishop of canterbury.
i think it was in the autumn of 1831 that my mother, with the rest of the family, returned from america. she lived at first at the farmhouse, but it was only for a short time. she came back with a book written about the united states, and the immediate pecuniary success which that work obtained enabled her to take us all back to the house at harrow — not to the first house, which would still have been beyond her means, but to that which has since been called orley farm, and which was an eden as compared to our abode at harrow weald. here my schooling went on under somewhat improved circumstances. the three miles became half a mile, and probably some salutary changes were made in my wardrobe. my mother and my sisters, too, were there. and a great element of happiness was added to us all in the affectionate and life-enduring friendship of the family of our close neighbour colonel grant. but i was never able to overcome — or even to attempt to overcome — the absolute isolation of my school position. of the cricket-ground or racket-court i was allowed to know nothing. and yet i longed for these things with an exceeding longing. i coveted popularity with a covetousness that was almost mean. it seemed to me that there would be an elysium in the intimacy of those very boys whom i was bound to hate because they hated me. something of the disgrace of my school-days has clung to me all through life. not that i have ever shunned to speak of them as openly as i am writing now, but that when i have been claimed as schoolfellow by some of those many hundreds who were with me either at harrow or at winchester, i have felt that i had no right to talk of things from most of which i was kept in estrangement.
through all my father’s troubles he still desired to send me either to oxford or cambridge. my elder brother went to oxford, and henry to cambridge. it all depended on my ability to get some scholarship that would help me to live at the university. i had many chances. there were exhibitions from harrow — which i never got. twice i tried for a sizarship at clare hall — but in vain. once i made a futile attempt for a scholarship at trinity, oxford — but failed again. then the idea of a university career was abandoned. and very fortunate it was that i did not succeed, for my career with such assistance only as a scholarship would have given me, would have ended in debt and ignominy.
when i left harrow i was all but nineteen, and i had at first gone there at seven. during the whole of those twelve years no attempt had been made to teach me anything but latin and greek, and very little attempt to teach me those languages. i do not remember any lessons either in writing or arithmetic. french and german i certainly was not taught. the assertion will scarcely be credited, but i do assert that i have no recollection of other tuition except that in the dead languages. at the school at sunbury there was certainly a writing master and a french master. the latter was an extra, and i never had extras. i suppose i must have been in the writing master’s class, but though i can call to mind the man, i cannot call to mind his ferule. it was by their ferules that i always knew them, and they me. i feel convinced in my mind that i have been flogged oftener than any human being alive. it was just possible to obtain five scourgings in one day at winchester, and i have often boasted that i obtained them all. looking back over half a century, i am not quite sure whether the boast is true; but if i did not, nobody ever did.
and yet when i think how little i knew of latin or greek on leaving harrow at nineteen, i am astonished at the possibility of such waste of time. i am now a fair latin scholar — that is to say, i read and enjoy the latin classics, and could probably make myself understood in latin prose. but the knowledge which i have, i have acquired since i left school — no doubt aided much by that groundwork of the language which will in the process of years make its way slowly, even through the skin. there were twelve years of tuition in which i do not remember that i ever knew a lesson! when i left harrow i was nearly at the top of the school, being a monitor, and, i think, the seventh boy. this position i achieved by gravitation upwards. i bear in mind well with how prodigal a hand prizes used to be showered about; but i never got a prize. from the first to the last there was nothing satisfactory in my school career — except the way in which i licked the boy who had to be taken home to be cured.
