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Classics for Children.
TOM BROWN AT RUGBY
BY AN OLD BOY
(THOMAS HUGHES).
EDITED BY
CLARA WEAVER ROBINSON.
BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS.
1902
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1888, by
GINN & COMPANY, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress,
at Washington.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
TYPOGRAPHY BY J. S. CUSHING & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
PRESSWORK BY GINN & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
INTRODUCTION.
In these days of zealous reform in school methods, it is well to keep
in mind the true aim of all education,--the right development of
character. It is important that our children acquire extensive
knowledge, and sound habits of thought; it is imperative that they
become honest, steadfast, and manly. Dr. Arnold, as head-master of
Rugby School, was eminently successful in attaining this object. In
"Tom Brown's School Days," Mr. Hughes has caught, and immortalized,
the spirit of his old teacher's work. While the book emphasizes the
peculiar moral earnestness of Dr. Arnold's pupils, it is free from all
suspicion of cant. Those who enjoy its pages should read also Dean
Stanley's admirable life of the great schoolmaster. We trust that it
will be many years before we cease to read the life of Mr. Hughes in
his daily works of goodwill to his fellow-men.
The notes have been prepared for children in the grammar school, as
explained in Mr. Ginn's preface to the "Lady of the Lake," in this
series.
A few passages have been omitted from the original text, in the
belief that it will thus be better adapted for the use of American
schoolboys; and the typographical errors of former editions have
been corrected.
N. L. R.
CANTON, N.Y.,
_October_ 20, 1888.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
THE BROWN FAMILY 1
CHAPTER II.
THE "VEAST" 24
CHAPTER III.
SUNDRY WARS AND ALLIANCES 49
CHAPTER IV.
THE STAGE COACH 73
CHAPTER V.
RUGBY AND FOOT-BALL 92
CHAPTER VI.
AFTER THE MATCH 118
CHAPTER VII.
SETTLING TO THE COLLAR 139
CHAPTER VIII.
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 163
CHAPTER IX.
A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 189
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
HOW THE TIDE TURNED 215
CHAPTER II.
THE NEW BOY 230
CHAPTER III.
ARTHUR MAKES A FRIEND 246
CHAPTER IV.
THE BIRD-FANCIERS 264
CHAPTER V.
THE FIGHT 281
CHAPTER VI.
FEVER IN THE SCHOOL 303
CHAPTER VII.
HARRY EAST'S DILEMMAS AND DELIVERANCES 324
CHAPTER VIII.
TOM BROWN'S LAST MATCH 343
CHAPTER IX.
FINIS 370
INDEX TO NOTES 381
THOMAS HUGHES.
Thomas Hughes is a native of the royal county of Berkshire, England.
From the nursery windows of the old farmhouse in Uffington, where he
was born, in 1823, he delighted in looking out on that famous White
Horse Hill which he describes in the opening chapters of "Tom Brown's
School Days."
His father was such an English squire as he represents Tom's father to
be, and his grandfather was vicar of the parish, and therefore a man
of a good deal of local influence. When a child, young Hughes must
have become familiar with the old parish church, which dates almost
from the time of William the Conqueror, and which has within it some
Roman brickwork which carries one back to the days when Agricola's
legions were building walled towns in Britain.
Thus the lad's earliest recollections would naturally be of these two
landmarks--the ivy-grown church, with its twenty and more generations
buried round it, and the great chalk hill whose rudely carved White
Horse can be seen gleaming in the sunshine full ten miles away, just
as it did when Alfred the Great cut it to commemorate his victory over
the Northmen a thousand years ago.
Thomas had a brother George, who was a little older than he, and who
was his opposite in many respects. From him he learned many lessons
which helped to shape his after life. George was quick to turn his
hand to anything, and a lover of all out-door sports; if they had a
spice of danger in them, so much the better. Thomas, on the other
hand, was naturally both awkward and timid; the sound of a gun
frightened him; and a pet pony soon found that, while George was his
master, he was Thomas's, and meant to keep so. Thomas was ashamed of
what he called his two left hands, with which he never seemed to get
the right hold of anything the first time. He was still more ashamed
of his timidity. That feeling of fear he could not prevent.
Eventually, however, he did better; he so mastered it that he could
bravely face what he feared, so making duty stand him in the stead of
that mere physical courage, which is often but another name for
insensibility to danger.
When he reached the age of seven he went to Twyford to school. Here he
found how easy it is to get a nickname, and how hard it is to get rid
of it. One of his first lessons related to Greek literature and to the
history of Cadmus, who was said to have "first carried letters from
Asia to Greece." Instead of asking the question in the book, the
master demanded, "What was Cadmus?" This new way of questioning
disconcerted the class, who were prepared to tell who Cadmus was, but
not what he was. But young Hughes, remembering the letter-carrier at
Uffington, suddenly jumped up and shouted out, "I can tell! Cadmus was
a postman, sir!" From that day the boy was christened "Cadmus" by his
companions, a name which, for convenience' sake, was soon shortened to
"Cad,"--a particularly aggravating abbreviation, since in England a
"cad" is the exact opposite of a gentleman. Then all sorts of
ingenious and mischievous changes were rung on it until poor "Cadmus"
was in a fair way of being driven wild with torment. Wherever he went
the walls echoed with the jeering cry. But luckily for him his brother
George happened to hear a big fellow teasing the lad, and rushing up
with clenched fist and blazing eyes, thrashed the bully so soundly
that after that Thomas enjoyed entire immunity from the objectionable
title.
After about three years at Twyford, the two brothers were sent to the
school at Rugby, then under the mastership of Doctor Arnold, who
proved himself to be the ablest teacher in England; not because he
taught his boys more than any other educator, but because more than
any other he awakened in them the true spirit of manhood. "Tom Brown's
School Days" is a record of the eight happy years that the lads spent
under the Doctor's influence. From Rugby they went to Oxford, where
Thomas Hughes graduated at Oriel College in 1845. The timid "Cadmus"
of Twyford not only passed through Rugby with credit to himself in
foot-ball, in Greek verses, and in the manly art of self-defence, but
he got a "Double First" at Oxford--that is, the highest honors in the
mathematics and the classics--and was elected captain of the 'Varsity
Crew and captain of the University Eleven at cricket as well.
It was while young Hughes was at Oriel that the corn law agitation
reached its height. A heavy duty on all imported grain had made bread
so dear that thousands of English workmen, with their families, were
brought to the verge of starvation. John Bright earnestly espoused
their cause and urged Parliament to repeal a tax that enriched a few
at the expense of a suffering multitude. Elliott, the "Corn Law
Rhymer," stirred the feelings of the masses with his impassioned
appeals in verse, so that all over the country hollow-cheeked artisans
were repeating the lines,--
"England! what for mine and me,
What hath bread-tax done for thee?
* * * * *
Cursed thy harvest, cursed thy land,
Hunger-stung thy skill'd right hand."
Thomas Hughes became a convert to the Liberal movement, which shortly
after succeeded in repealing a tariff that had been the cause of such
wide-spread misery. From that day his sympathies have always been with
those classes who are called to earn the least and endure the most;
and when in 1848 he was admitted to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, London,
he had got the name of being a radical and a reformer in politics--a
name, then, rather more dreadful to steady-going, conservative English
country gentlemen of the "Squire Brown" type than that of mad dog.
But long before this the young man had got over his dread of
opprobrious names, and his fear of those who have nothing harder to
hurl.
With a few other resolute spirits he set himself to work to organize
those joint-stock industries and business enterprises which have since
developed into the colossal co-operative stores of London and the
cotton mills of Oldham, representing many millions of capital, the
combined savings of thrifty artisans and other persons of small means.
In all this, Mr. Hughes's avowed object has been "to make England the
best place for workingmen to live in that the sun ever shone upon."
Whether that can be done or not in this age of the world is certainly
open to question, but it is equally certain that there can be no
possible harm in making the attempt. That the workingmen have
appreciated the effort is evident from the fact that they elected Mr.
Hughes to Parliament in 1865. It is said that ordinarily the expense
of getting into the House of Commons--an unpaid body--averages about
$75,000, which the candidate or his friends must be prepared to spend.
But in Lambeth, a district of London, inhabited almost wholly by poor
men, two hundred of Mr. Hughes's admirers came forward and worked
night and day without receiving a single shilling of any man's money,
solely with the determination of seeing their candidate succeed.
Since then, the writer of "Tom Brown's School Days" would certainly
have broken down from overwork if he had not been, as he says, an
"Angular Saxon" and a muscular Christian as well. During his nine
years' pull in the political harness he earned the double honor of
helping forward the cause of the people and at the same time he so won
the regard of the Crown that he received the appointment of Queen's
Counsel. While member of Parliament Mr. Hughes was likewise carrying
on a large and lucrative law practice, acting as president of the
Workingmen's College, which he was instrumental in founding; serving
as referee in disputes between manufacturers and their employees in
such a way as to get the respect and good-will of both; serving also
as director in co-operative banks, coal mines, cotton mills, machine
shops, grocery stores, land and building associations; besides being
chief manager of the Crystal Palace company, and colonel in a
volunteer rifle corps.
Yet well known as Mr. Hughes is for his manifold political and
philanthropic services, he is still better known by his books. Though
with him literature has been rather a recreation than a vocation, yet
his fame seems destined to rest on it, and especially on his "Tom
Brown," which has been pronounced "the best description of public
school life that ever has been, or is ever likely to be, written."
This famous work, published in 1858, was followed the next year by
"The Scouring of the White Horse," a story of his favorite White Horse
Hill. Three years later came "Tom Brown at Oxford," then "The Life of
Alfred the Great," and lastly his "Memoirs of a Brother" and his
"Manliness of Christ," besides scores, if not hundreds, of magazine
and review articles and letters to London and American papers.
In 1870 Mr. Hughes made the tour of this country, receiving such a
welcome from his many friends as "Tom Brown" was sure to get from both
old and young. Ten years afterward he undertook to establish an
English colony in the Cumberland Mountains of East Tennessee. It was
called Rugby, and it was founded in the hope that it might be useful
to many educated young men of good families who could find no opening
worthy of their powers at home. As he said, "Of the many sad sights in
England there is none sadder than this, of first-rate human material
going helplessly to waste, and in too many cases beginning to sour and
taint, instead of strengthening the national life." A hundred years
before, Franklin had expressed the same conviction in his pithy maxim,
"'Tis hard for an empty bag to stand upright." It was to fill these
vacant lives with honest work and its rewards that Thomas Hughes
started his emigration to the wilds of Tennessee. There, co-operation
was to be tried in farming, cattle-raising, lumbering, and trade, thus
saving the community of workers from that "infinite terror of not
making money," which Carlyle declared was the only thing that now
stirred deep fear in the souls of his countrymen. Many an ardent young
man fresh from the old Rugby of "Tom Brown" fame fondly hoped that the
new, western Rugby might enable him to say with Tennyson's "Northern
Farmer," as he listened to the music of his horse's hoofs on the road
home from market,--
"Proputty, proputty, proputty,--that's what I 'ears 'em saaey";
but, unfortunately, the "proputty" will not always come even at the
bidding of hard work and active brains. The Tennessee enterprise has
not commanded success, though doubtless, as Addison would say, it has
done better--it has deserved it.
Since the inauguration of the movement Mr. Hughes has been appointed
county judge of Cheshire, and now makes his home in the quaint old
town of Chester, the county seat. He is verging on the limit of that
threescore and ten which the Psalmist allotted as the measure of
human life. Few men in our day can look back over a busier or more
fruitful career. The awkward and timid boy has shown the world what
rare force of self-conquest, of persevering growth, of grappling with
difficulties, and of successful achievement was to come out of that
unpromising beginning. Because of this, we are all debtors to the
author of "Tom Brown"; not only for his books, but still more because
we see that these books are the frank expression of a brave, earnest,
and untiring spirit.
D. H. M.
TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS.
_PART I._
CHAPTER I.
THE BROWN FAMILY.
"I'm the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir,
With liberal notions under my cap."--_Ballad._
The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the
pencil of Doyle,[1] within the memory of the young gentlemen who are
now matriculating[2] at the universities. Notwithstanding the
well-merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at
all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be
written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible
of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns. For centuries, in
their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth
in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests
and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have
won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen's[3]
work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft[4] at Cressy and
Agincourt[5]--with the brown bill[6] and pike under the brave Lord
Willoughby--with culverin and demi-culverin[7] against Spaniards and
Dutchmen--with hand-grenade[8] and sabre, and musket and bayonet,
under Rodney[9] and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and
Wellington, they have carried their lives in their hands; getting hard
knocks and hard work in plenty, which was, on the whole, what they
looked for, and the best thing for them; and little praise or pudding,
which indeed they, and most of us, are better without. Talbots[10]
and Stanleys, St. Maurs, and such-like folk have led armies and made
laws time out of mind; but those noble families would be somewhat
astounded--if the accounts ever came to be fairly taken--to find how
small their work for England has been by the side of that of the
Browns.
[1] #Doyle#: an English artist noted for his humorous and
satirical designs.
[2] #Matriculating#: entering.
[3] #Yeomen#: small independent farmers. They have generally
constituted the best part of the English army.
[4] #Cloth-yard shaft#: an arrow a yard in length.
[5] #Cressy and Agincourt#: English victories over the French
in 1346 and 1415.
[6] #Bill#: a combined spear and battle-axe.
[7] #Culverin and demi-culverin#: ancient forms of cannon.
[8] #Hand-grenade#: a kind of bomb or shell thrown by hand.
[9] #Rodney#, etc.: famous English naval and military
commanders.
[10] #Talbots#, etc.: noted family names of the English
nobility.
These latter, indeed, have until the present generation rarely been
sung by poet, or chronicled by sage. They have wanted their "sacer
vates,"[11] having been too solid to rise to the top by themselves,
and not having been largely gifted with the talent of catching hold
of, and holding on tight to, whatever good things happened to be
going--the foundation of the fortunes of so many noble families. But
the world goes on its way, and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the
Browns, like other wrongs, seem in a fair way to get righted. And this
present writer, having for many years of his life been a devout
Brown-worshipper, and moreover having the honor of being nearly
connected with an eminently respectable branch of the great Brown
family, is anxious, so far as in him lies, to help the wheel over,
and throw his stone[12] on to the pile.
[11] #"Sacer vates"#: inspired bard or poet.
[12] #Throw his stone#, etc.: help to build their cairn or
monument.
THE BROWN CHARACTER.
However, gentle reader, or simple reader, whichever you may be, lest
you should be led to waste your precious time upon these pages, I make
so bold as at once to tell you the sort of folk you'll have to meet
and put up with, if you and I are to jog on comfortably together. You
shall hear at once what sort of folk the Browns are, at least my
branch of them; and then if you don't like the sort, why cut the
concern at once, and let you and I cry quits before either of us can
grumble at the other. In the first place, the Browns are a fighting
family. One may question their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about
their fight there can be no question. Wherever hard knocks of any
kind, visible or invisible, are going, there the Brown who is nearest
must shove in his carcass. And these carcasses for the most part
answer very well to the characteristic propensity; they are a
square-headed and snake-necked generation, broad in the shoulder, deep
in the chest, and thin in the flank, carrying no lumber. Then for
clanship,[13] they are as bad as Highlanders; it is amazing the belief
they have in one another. With them there is nothing like the Browns,
to the third and fourth generation. "Blood is thicker than water," is
one of their pet sayings. They can't be happy unless they are always
meeting one another. Never was such people for family gatherings,
which, were you a stranger, or sensitive, you might think had better
not have been gathered together. For during the whole time of their
being together they luxuriate in telling one another their minds on
whatever subject turns up; and their minds are wonderfully
antagonistic, and all their opinions are downright beliefs. Till
you've been among them some time and understand them, you can't think
but that they are quarrelling. Not a bit of it; they love and respect
one another ten times the more after a good set family arguing
bout,[14] and go back, one to his curacy,[15] another to his
chambers,[16] and another to his regiment, freshened for work, and
more than ever convinced that the Browns are the height of company.
[13] #Clanship#: here, the holding together of a class, tribe,
or family.
[14] #Bout#: contest.
[15] #Curacy#: parish.
[16] #Chambers#: law offices.
This family training, too, combined with their turn for combativeness,
makes them eminently quixotic.[17] They can't let anything alone which
they think going wrong. They must speak their mind about it, annoying
all easy-going folk; and spend their time and money in having a tinker
at it, however hopeless the job. It is an impossibility to a Brown to
leave the most disreputable lame dog on the other side of a stile.
Most other folk get tired of such work. The old Browns, with red
faces, white whiskers, and bald heads, go on believing and fighting to
a green old age. They have always a crotchet[18] going, till the old
man with a scythe[19] reaps and garners them away for troublesome old
boys as they are.
And the most provoking thing is, that no failures knock them up, or
make them hold their hands, or think you, or me, or other sane people
in the right. Failures slide off them like July rain off a duck's back
feathers. Jem and his whole family turn out bad, and cheat them one
week, and the next they are doing the same thing for Jack; and when he
goes to the treadmill,[20] and his wife and children to the workhouse,
they will be on the look-out for Bill to take his place.
[17] #Quixotic#: romantic or visionary
[18] #Crotchet#: whim, notion, "hobby."
[19] #Old man with a scythe#: Father Time.
[20] #Treadmill#: a wheel on which prisoners were formerly
compelled to work.
TOM BROWN'S BIRTHPLACE.
However, it is time for us to get from the general to the particular;
so, leaving the great army of Browns, who are scattered over the whole
empire on which the sun never sets, and whose general diffusion I take
to be the chief cause of that empire's stability, let us at once fix
our attention upon the small nest of Browns in which our hero was
hatched, and which dwelt in that portion of the Royal County of
Berks,[21] which is called the Vale of White Horse.
[21] #Berks#: Berkshire, a county west of London. It is called
"Royal" because it is the seat of Windsor Castle. The Vale of
the White Horse gets its name from the gigantic image of a
horse cut through the turf in the side of a chalk hill.
Tradition says it was done over a thousand year ago, to
commemorate a great victory over the Danes by Alfred.
Most of you have probably travelled down the Great Western Railway as
far as Swindon. Those of you who did so with your eyes open have been
aware, soon after leaving the Didcot Station, of a fine range of chalk
hills running parallel with the railway on the left-hand side as you
go down, and distant some two or three miles, more or less, from the
line. The highest point in the range is the White Horse Hill, which
you come in front of just before you stop at the Shrivenham Station.
If you love English scenery and have a few hours to spare, you can't
do better, the next time you pass, than stop at the Farringdon road or
Shrivenham Station, and make your way to that highest point. And those
who care for the vague old stories that haunt country-sides all about
England, will not, if they are wise, be content with only a few hours'
stay; for, glorious as the view is, the neighborhood is yet more
interesting for its relics of by-gone times. I only know two English
neighborhoods thoroughly, and in each, within a circle of five miles,
there is enough of interest and beauty to last any reasonable man his
life. I believe this to be the case almost throughout the country, but
each has a special attraction, and none can be richer than the one I
am speaking of and going to introduce you to very particularly; for on
this subject I must be prosy; so those that don't care for England in
detail may skip the chapter.
THE OLD BOY MOURNETH OVER YOUNG ENGLAND.
O young England! young England! You who are born into these racing
railroad times, when there's a Great Exhibition, or some monster sight
every year, and you can get over a couple of thousand miles of ground
for three pound ten,[22] in a five weeks' holiday, why don't you know
more of your own birthplaces? You're all in the ends of the earth it
seems to me, as soon as you get your necks out of the educational collar
for midsummer holidays, long vacations, or what not. Going round
Ireland, with a return ticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copies of
Tennyson on the tops of Swiss mountains; or pulling down the Danube in
Oxford racing-boats. And when you get home for a quiet fortnight, you
turn the steam off, and lie on your backs in the paternal garden,
surrounded by the last batch of books from Mudie's Library, and half
bored to death.
[22] #Three pound ten# (shillings): the English shilling is
about twenty five cents, and the pound may be called five
dollars.
Well, well! I know it has its good side. You all patter French more or
less, and perhaps German; you have seen men and cities, no doubt, and
have your opinions, such as they are, about schools of painting, high
art, and all that; have seen the pictures at Dresden[23] and the
Louvre,[24] and know the taste of sauer-kraut.[25] All I say is, you
don't know your own lanes and woods and fields. Though you may be
chock-full of science, not one in twenty of you knows where to find
the wood-sorrel, or bee-orchis,[26] which grows in the next wood or on
the down[27] three miles off, or what the bog-bean and wood-sage are
good for. And as for the country legends, the stories of the old
gable-ended farm-houses, the place where the last skirmish was fought
in the civil wars,[28] where the parish butts[29] stood, where the
last highwayman turned to bay, where the last ghost was laid[30] by
the parson, they're gone out of date altogether.
[23] #Dresden#: a city of Germany, noted for its treasures of
art.
[24] #The Louvre#: an ancient palace in Paris, containing vast
collections of sculptures and paintings.
[25] #Sauer-kraut#: a German dish, prepared from cabbage.
[26] #Bee-orchis# (orkis): a wild-flower resembling a bee.
[27] #Down#: a barren hill of chalk or sand.
[28] #Civil wars#: those between Parliament and King Charles
I., in the seventeenth century.
[29] #Butts#: targets for archery practice. Before the
invention of gunpowder they were set up by law in every
parish.
[30] #Laid#: dispelled by religious ceremonies.
Now, in my time, when we got home by the old coach, which put us down
at the cross-roads with our boxes, the first day of the holidays, and
had been driven off by the family coachman, singing "Dulce domum"[31]
at the top of our voices, there we were, fixtures, till black
Monday[32] came round. We had to cut out our own amusements within a
walk or a ride of home. And so we got to know all the country folk,
and their ways and songs and stories, by heart; and went over the
fields and woods and hills again and again, till we made friends of
them all. We were Berkshire, or Gloucestershire, or Yorkshire boys:
and you're young cosmopolites,[33] belonging to all counties and no
countries. No doubt it's all right; I dare say it is. This is the day
of large views and glorious humanity, and all that; but I wish
backsword play[34] hadn't gone out in the Vale of White Horse, and
that that confounded Great Western hadn't carried away Alfred's Hill
to make an embankment.
[31] #Dulce domum#: sweet home.
[32] #Black Monday#: the end of the holidays.
VALES IN GENERAL.
But to return to the said Vale of White Horse, the country in which
the first scenes of this true and interesting story are laid. As I
said, the Great Western now runs right through it, and it is a land of
large rich pastures, bounded by ox-fences, and covered with fine
hedgerow timber, with here and there a nice little gorse[35] or
spinney,[36] where abideth poor Charley,[37] having no other cover[38]
to which to betake himself for miles and miles, when pushed out some
fine November morning by the Old Berkshire.[39] Those who have been
there, and well mounted, only know how he and the staunch little pack
who dash after him--heads high and sterns low, with a breast-high
scent--can consume the ground at such times. There being little
plow-land, and few woods, the Vale is only an average sporting
country, except for hunting. The villages are straggling, queer
old-fashioned places, the houses being dropped down without the least
regularity, in nooks and out-of-the-way corners, by the sides of
shadowy lanes and footpaths, each with its patch of garden. They are
built chiefly of good gray-stone and thatched;[40] though I see that
within the last year or two the red brick cottages are multiplying,
for the Vale is beginning to manufacture largely both bricks and
tiles. There are lots of waste ground by the side of the roads in
every village, amounting often to village greens, where feed the pigs
and ganders of the people; and these roads are old-fashioned, homely
roads very dirty and badly made, and hardly endurable in winter, but
pleasant jog-trot roads, running through the great pasture lands,
dotted here and there with little clumps of thorns, where the sleek
kine are feeding, with no fence on either side of them, and a gate at
the end of each field, which makes you get out of your gig (if you
keep one), and gives you a chance of looking about you every quarter
of a mile.
[33] #Cosmopolites#: citizens of the world at large, familiar
with all countries.
[34] #Backsword play#: the game of single-stick, or fencing
with cudgels.
[35] #Gorse#: a thick, prickly, evergreen shrub, which grows
wild and bears beautiful yellow flowers.
[36] #Spinney#: a small grove filled with undergrowth.
[37] #Charley#: a fox.
[38] #Cover#: a retreat, or hiding-place.
[39] #Old Berkshire#: an association of hunters.
[40] #Thatched#: roofed with straw or reeds.
One of the moralists whom we sat under in our youth--was it the great
Richard Swiveller,[41] or Mr. Stiggins?[42] says, "We are born in a
vale, and must take the consequences of being found in such a
situation." These consequences, I for one am ready to encounter. I
pity people who wern't born in a vale. I don't mean a flat country,
but a vale; that is, a flat country bounded by hills. The having your
hill _always_ in view, if you choose to turn toward him, that's the
essence of a vale. There he is forever in the distance, your friend
and companion; you never lose him as you do in hilly districts.
[41] #Richard Swiveller#: a jolly character who lives by his
wits. See Dickens's "Old Curiosity Shop."
[42] #Mr. Stiggins#: a hypocritical parson. See Dickens's
"Pickwick Papers."
THE OLD ROMAN CAMP.
And then what a hill is the White Horse Hill! There it stands right
above all the rest, nine hundred feet above the sea, and the boldest,
bravest shape for a chalk hill that you ever saw. Let us go up to the
top of him, and see what is to be found there. Ay, you may well
wonder, and think it odd you never heard of this before; but, wonder
or not as you please, there are hundreds of such things lying about
England, which wiser folk than you know nothing of, and care nothing
for. Yes, it's a magnificent Roman camp,[43] and no mistake, with
gates, and ditch, and mounds, all as complete as it was twenty years
after the strong old rogues left it. Here, right up on the highest
point, from which they say you can see eleven counties, they trenched
round all the table-land, some twelve or fourteen acres, as was their
custom, for they couldn't bear anybody to overlook them, and made
their eyrie.[44] The ground falls away rapidly on all sides. Was there
ever such turf in the whole world? You sink up to your ankles at every
step, and yet the spring of it is delicious. There is always a breeze
in the "camp," as it is called and here it lies just as the Romans
left it, except that cairn,[45] on the east side, left by her
majesty's corps of sappers and miners[46] the other day, when they and
the engineer officer had finished their sojourn there, and their
surveys for the Ordnance Map[47] of Berkshire. It is altogether a
place that you won't forget--a place to open a man's soul and make him
prophesy, as he looks down on that great vale spread out as the garden
of the Lord before him, and wave on wave of the mysterious downs
behind; and to the right and left the chalk hills running away into
the distance, along which he can trace for miles the old Roman road,
"the Ridgeway" ("the Rudge" as the country folk call it), keeping
straight along the highest back of the hills; such a place as
Balak[48] brought Balaam to, and told him to prophesy against the
people in the valley beneath. And he could not, neither shall you, for
they are a people of the Lord who abide there.
[43] #Roman camp#: the Romans, when they conquered England,
about 78 A.D., built a stronghold here.
[44] #Eyrie#: the nest of a bird of prey; here, a
gathering-place for Roman soldiers.
[45] #Cairn#: a heap of stones set up to mark a spot.
[46] #Sappers and miners#: usually, soldiers employed in
working on trenches and fortifications or in undermining those
of an enemy; here, engaged in surveying.
[47] #Ordnance Map#: an official or government map.
[48] #Balak#: see Numbers xxii.
BATTLE OF ASHDOWN.
And now we leave the camp, and descend toward the west, and are on
the Ashdown. We are treading on heroes. It is sacred ground for
Englishmen, more sacred than all but one or two fields where their
bones lie whitening. For this is the actual place where our Alfred[49]
won his great battle, the battle of Ashdown "AEscendum" in the
chroniclers), which broke the Danish power, and made England a
Christian land. The Danes held the camp and the slope where we are
standing--the whole crown of the hill, in fact. "The heathen had
beforehand seized the higher ground," as old Asser[50] says, having
wasted everything behind them from London, and being just ready to
burst down on the fair vale, Alfred's own birthplace and heritage.
And up the heights came the Saxons,[51] as they did at the Alma.[52]
"The Christians led up their line from the lower ground. There stood
also on that same spot a single thorn-tree, marvellous stumpy (which
we ourselves with our very own eyes have seen)." Bless the old
chronicler![53] does he think nobody ever saw the "single thorn-tree"
but himself? Why, there it stands to this very day, just on the edge
of the slope, and I saw it not three weeks since; an old single
thorn-tree, "marvellous stumpy." At least, if it isn't the same tree,
it ought to have been, for it's just in the place where the battle
must have been won or lost--"around which, as I was saying, the two
lines of foemen came together in battle with a huge shout. And in this
place one of the two kings of the heathen and five of his earls fell
down and died, and many thousands of the heathen side in the same
place." After which crowning mercy, the pious king, that there might
never be wanting a sign and a memorial to the country-side, carved out
on the northern side of the chalk hill under the camp, where it is
almost precipitous, the great Saxon white horse, which he who will may
see from the railway, and which gives its name to the vale over which
it has looked these thousand years and more.
[49] #Alfred#: Alfred the Great, King of the West Saxons, 871.
He defeated the Danes, who had overrun most of England, at
Ashdown, and compelled them to make a treaty of peace. He is
justly considered one of the noblest and wisest of the English
sovereigns; and the thousandth anniversary of his birth was
celebrated in 1849, at Wantage, Berks.
[50] #Asser#: a contemporary of Alfred; he wrote his life.
[51] #Saxons#: a name given to certain German tribes who
conquered Britain, in the fifth century. The name England came
from the Angles, a people of the same stock, who settled in
the east and north of the island. From these Anglo-Saxons the
English have in great part descended.
[52] #Alma#: a river in the Crimea where a desperate battle
was fought between the Russians and the allied English and
French in 1854.
[53] #Chronicler#: Asser, from whom this is quoted.
Right down below the White Horse is a curious deep and broad gully
called "the Manger," into one side of which the hills fall with a
series of the most lovely sweeping curves, known as the "Giant's
Stairs"; they are not a bit like stairs, but I never saw anything like
them anywhere else, with their short green turf, and tender bluebells,
and gossamer and thistle-down gleaming in the sun, and the sheep-paths
running along their sides like ruled lines.
The other side of the Manger is formed by the Dragon's Hill, a curious
little round self-confident fellow, thrown forward from the range, and
utterly unlike everything round him. On this hill some deliverer of
mankind--St. George[54] the country folk used to tell me--killed a
dragon. Whether it were St. George, I cannot say; but surely a dragon
was killed there, for you may see the marks yet where his blood ran
down, and more by token[55] the place where it ran down is the easiest
way up the hill-side.
[54] #St. George#: the patron saint of England.
[55] #More by token#: as a sign or proof that this is so.
Passing along the Ridgeway to the west for about a mile, we come
to a little clump of young beech and firs, with a growth of thorn
and privet[56] underwood. Here you may find nests of the strong
down-partridge and pewit, but take care that the keeper[57] isn't down
upon you; and in the middle of it is an old cromlech,[58] a huge flat
stone raised on seven or eight others, and led up to by a path, with
large single stones set up on each side. This is Wayland Smith's
cave,[59] a place of classic fame now; but as Sir Walter[60] has
touched it, I may as well let it alone, and refer you to Kenilworth
for the legend.
[56] #Privet#: a shrub much used for hedges.
[57] #Keeper#: the gamekeeper, a man kept on great estates to
look after the game.
[58] #Cromlech#: a rude tomb built by the first inhabitants of
Britain.
[59] #Wayland Smith's Cave#: a "supernatural smith" who shod
horses on payment of sixpence.
[60] #Sir Walter#: Sir Walter Scott.
The thick deep wood which you see in the hollow, about a mile off,
surrounds Ashdown Park, built by Inigo Jones.[61] Four broad alleys
are cut through the wood, from circumference to centre, and each leads
to one face of the house. The mystery of the downs hangs about house
and wood, as they stand there alone, so unlike all around, with
the green slopes, studded with great stones just about this part,
stretching away on all sides. It was a wise Lord Craven,[62] I think,
who pitched his tent there.
[61] #Inigo Jones#: a celebrated architect of the 17th
century.
[62] #Lord Craven#: the owner of the estate on which the
"White Horse" is located.
THE "SEVEN BARROWS" FARM.
Passing along the Ridgeway to the east, we soon come to cultivated
land. The downs, strictly so called, are no more; Lincolnshire farmers
have been imported, and the long fresh slopes are sheep-walks[63] no
more, but grow famous turnips and barley. One of these improvers lives
over there at the "Seven Barrows"[64] farm, another mystery of the
great downs. There are the barrows still, solemn and silent, like
ships in the calm sea, the sepulchres of some sons of men. But of
whom? It is three miles from the White Horse, too far for the slain of
Ashdown to be buried there--who shall say what heroes are waiting
there? But we must get down into the Vale again, and so away by the
Great Western Railway to town, for time and the printer's devil press;
and it is a terrible long and slippery descent, and a shocking bad
road. At the bottom, however, there is a pleasant public,[65] whereat
we must really take a modest quencher, for the down air is provocative
of thirst. So we pull up under an old oak which stands before the
door.
[63] #Sheep-walks#: sheep pastures, for which the "downs" are
much used.
[64] #Barrows#: ancient burial mounds.
[65] #Public#: a public house.
THE BLOWING STONE.
"What is the name of your hill, landlord?"
"Blawing STWUN Hill, sir, to be sure."
[READER. "_Sturm?_"
AUTHOR. "_Stone_, stupid; The Blowing _Stone_."]
"And of your house? I can't make out the sign."
"Blawing STWUN, sir," says the landlord, pouring out his old ale from
a Toby Philpot jug,[66] with a melodious crash, into the long-necked
glass.
"What queer names!" say we, sighing at the end of our draught, and
holding out the glass to be replenished.
"Bean't queer at all, as I can see, sir," says mine host, handing
back our glass, "seeing that this here is the Blawing Stwun itself";
putting his hand on a square lump of stone, some three feet and a
half high, perforated with two or three queer holes, like petrified
antediluvian[67] rat-holes, which lies there close under the oak,
under our very nose. We are more than ever puzzled, and drink our
second glass of ale, wondering what will come next. "Like to hear
un,[68] sir?" says mine host, setting down Toby Philpot on the tray,
and resting both hands on the "Stwun." We are ready for anything;
and he, without waiting for a reply, applies his mouth to one of
the rat-holes. Something must come of it, if he doesn't burst. Good
heavens! I hope he has no apoplectic tendencies. Yes, here it comes,
sure enough, a grewsome[69] sound between a moan and a roar, and
spreads itself away over the valley, and up the hill-side, and into
the woods at the back of the house, a ghost-like awful voice. "Um[70]
do say, sir," says mine host, rising, purple-faced, while the moan is
still coming out of the Stwun, "as they used in old times to warn the
country-side, by blawing the Stwun when the enemy was a comin'--and as
how folks could make un heered then for seven mile round; leastways,
so I've heerd lawyer Smith say, and he knows a smart sight about them
old times." We can hardly swallow lawyer Smith's seven miles, but
could the blowing of the stone have been a summons, a sort of sending
the fiery cross[71] round the neighborhood in the old times? What old
times? Who knows? We pay for our beer, and are thankful.
"And what's the name of the village just below, landlord?"
"Kingstone Lisle, sir."
"Fine plantations[72] you've got here."
"Yes, sir, the Squire's[73] 'mazin' fond of trees and such like."
"No wonder. He's got some real beauties to be fond of. Good-day,
landlord."
"Good-day, sir, and a pleasant ride to 'e."[74]
[66] #Toby Philpot jug#: a large brown pitcher, shaped like a
jolly old gentleman of the olden time.
[67] #Antediluvian#: before the deluge.
[68] #Un#: it; also him or her.
[69] #Grewsome#: frightful.
[70] #Um#: they.
[71] #Fiery cross#: a cross, the ends of which had been fired
and then extinguished in blood. It was sent round by the
chiefs of clans in time of war, to summon their followers.
[72] #Plantations#: groves of trees set out in regular order.
[73] #Squire#: a country gentleman.
[74] #'E#: thee or you.
FARRINGDON AND PUSEY.
And now, my boys, you whom I want to get for readers, have you had
enough? Will you give in at once, and say you're convinced, and let me
begin my story or will you have some more of it? Remember, I've only
been over a little bit of the hill-side yet, what you could ride round
easily on your ponies in an hour. I'm only just come down into the
vale, by Blowing Stone Hill, and if I once begin about the vale,
what's to stop me? You'll have to hear all about Wantage, the
birthplace of Alfred, and Farringdon, which held out so long for
Charles I. (the vale was near Oxford, and dreadfully malignant;[75]
full of Throgmortons, Puseys, and Pyes, and such like, and their
brawny retainers). Did you ever read Thomas Ingoldsby's "Legend
of Hamilton Tighe"?[76] If you haven't, you ought to have. Well,
Farringdon is where he lived, before he went to sea; his real name was
Hampden Pye, and the Pyes were the great folk at Farringdon. Then
there's Pusey. You've heard of the Pusey horn,[77] which King Canute
gave to the Puseys of that day, and which the gallant old squire,
lately gone to his rest (whom Berkshire freeholders[78] turned out of
last Parliament, to their eternal disgrace, for voting according to
his conscience), used to bring out on high days, holidays, and bonfire
nights. And the splendid old Cross church at Uffington, the Uffingas
town; how the whole country-side teems with Saxon names and memories!
And the old moated grange[79] at Compton, nestled close under the
hill-side, where twenty Marianas[80] may have lived, with its bright
water-lilies in the moat, and its yew walk "the cloister walk," and
its peerless terraced gardens. There they all are, and twenty things
besides, for those who care about them, and have eyes. And these are
the sort of things you may find, I believe, every one of you, in any
common English country neighborhood.
[75] #Malignant#: The Parliamentary or Puritan party during
the civil wars of Charles I. called those who adhered to the
king "malignants."
[76] #Tighe#: this legend relates a conspiracy by which young
Tighe was led into the thick of a fight and killed.
[77] #Pusey horn#: the Pusey family hold their estate not by
a title deed, but by a horn, given, it is said, to William
Pecote (perhaps an ancestor of the Puseys) by Canute, a Danish
king of England in the eleventh century. The horn bears the
following inscription: "I, King Canute, give William Pecote
this horn to hold by thy land."
[78] #Freeholders#: landowners.
[79] #Moated grange#: a farm or estate surrounded by a broad
deep ditch for defence in old times.
[80] #Marianas#: Mariana, a beautiful woman, one of the most
lovable of Shakespeare's characters. See "Measure for
Measure."
Will you look for them under your own noses, or will you not? Well,
well, I've done what I can to make you, and if you will go gadding
over half Europe now every holiday, I can't help it. I was born and
bred a west-countryman,[81] thank God! a Wessex man, a citizen of the
noblest Saxon kingdom of Wessex, a regular "Angular Saxon,"[82] the
very soul of me "adscriptus glebae."[83] There's nothing like the old
country-side for me, and no music like the twang of the real old Saxon
tongue, as one gets it fresh from the veritable chaw[84] in the White
Horse Vale; and I say with "Gaarge Ridler," the old west-country
yeoman,
"Throo aall the waarld owld Gaarge would bwoast,
Commend me to merry owld England mwoast;
While vools[85] gwoes prating vur and nigh,
We stwops at whum,[86] my dog and I."[A]
[A] For this old song see Hughes's "Scouring of the White
Horse."
[81] #West-countryman#: a west of England man.
[82] #Angular Saxon#: a play on the words _Anglo-Saxon_.
[83] #Adscriptus glebae#: attached to the soil.
[84] #Chaw#: "chaw bacon," a nickname for an English peasant.
[85] #Vools#: fools.
[86] #Whum#: home.
SQUIRE BROWN AND HIS HOUSEHOLD.
Here at any rate lived and stopped at home Squire Brown, J. P.[87] for
the county of Berks, in a village near the foot of the White Horse
range. And here he dealt out justice and mercy in a rough way, and
brought up sons and daughters, and hunted the fox, and grumbled at the
badness of the roads and the times. And his wife dealt out stockings,
and calico[88] shirts, and smock frocks,[89] and comforting drinks to
the old folks with the "rheumatiz," and good counsel to all; and kept
the coal and clothes clubs going, for Yule-tide,[90] when the bands of
mummers[91] came round dressed out in ribbons and colored paper caps,
and stamped round the Squire's kitchen, repeating in true sing-song
vernacular[92] the legend of St. George and his fight, and the
ten-pound doctor,[93] who plays his part at healing the Saint--a
relic, I believe, of the old middle-age mysteries.[94] It was the
first dramatic representation which greeted the eyes of little Tom,
who was brought down into the kitchen by his nurse to witness it, at
the mature age of three years. Tom was the eldest child of his
parents, and from his earliest babyhood exhibited the family
characteristics in great strength. He was a hearty, strong boy from
the first, given to fighting with and escaping from his nurse, and
fraternizing with all the village boys, with whom he made expeditions
all round the neighborhood. And here in the quiet, old-fashioned
country village, under the shadow of the everlasting hills, Tom Brown
was reared, and never left it till he went first to school when nearly
eight years of age, for in those days change of air twice a year was
not thought absolutely necessary for the health of all her majesty's
lieges.[95]
[87] #J. P.#: justice of the peace.
[88] #Calico#: white cotton cloth called calico in England,
to distinguish it from print.
[89] #Smock frocks#: coarse white frocks worn by farm
laborers.
[90] #Yule-tide#: Christmas. Clubs are formed by the poor
several months in advance, to furnish coal, clothes, and
poultry for Christmas time,--each member contributing a few
pence weekly.
[91] #Mummers#: maskers, merrymakers in fantastic costumes.
[92] #Vernacular#: one's native tongue.
[93] #Ten-pound doctor#: a quack doctor.
[94] #Mysteries#: rude dramatic plays of a religious
character, once very popular.
[95] #Lieges#: loyal subjects.
THE OLD BOY ABUSETH MOVING ON.
I have been credibly informed, and am inclined to believe, that the
various Boards of Directors of Railway Companies, those gigantic
jobbers[96] and bribers, while quarrelling about everything else,
agreed together some ten years back to buy up the learned profession
of medicine, body and soul. To this end they set apart several
millions of money, which they continually distribute judiciously among
the doctors, stipulating only this one thing, that they shall
prescribe change of air to every patient who can pay, or borrow money
to pay, a railway fare, and see their prescription carried out. If it
be not for this, why is it that none of us can be well at home for a
year together? It wasn't so twenty years ago,--not a bit of it. The
Browns didn't go out of the county once in five years. A visit to
Reading or Abingdon twice a year, at Assizes or Quarter Sessions[97]
which the Squire made on his horse, with a pair of saddle-bags
containing his wardrobe--a stay of a day or two at some country
neighbor's--or an expedition to a county ball or the yeomanry
review--[98] made up the sum of the Brown locomotion in most years. A
stray Brown from some distant county dropped in every now and then; or
from Oxford, on grave nag, an old don[99] contemporary of the Squire;
and were looked upon by the Brown household and the villagers with the
same sort of feeling with which we now regard a man who has crossed
the Rocky Mountains, or launched a boat on the great lake in Central
Africa. The White Horse Vale, remember, was traversed by no great
road; nothing but country parish roads, and these very bad. Only one
coach ran there, and this one only from Wantage to London, so that the
western part of the vale was without regular means of moving on, and
certainly didn't seem to want them. There was the canal, by the way,
which supplied the country-side with coal, and up and down which
continually went the long barges with the big black men lounging by
the side of the horses along the towing-path, and the women in
bright-colored handkerchiefs standing in the sterns steering.
Standing, I say, but you could never see whether they were standing or
sitting, all but their heads and shoulders being out of sight in the
cozy little cabins which occupied some eight feet of the stern and
which Tom Brown pictured to himself as the most desirable of
residences. His nurse told him that those good-natured-looking women
were in the constant habit of enticing children into the barges and
taking them up to London and selling them, which Tom wouldn't believe,
and which made him resolve as soon as possible to accept the
oft-proffered invitation of these sirens[100] to "young master," to
come in and have a ride. But as yet the nurse was too much for Tom.
[96] #Jobbers#: speculators or members of corrupt political
rings.
[97] #Assizes or Quarter Sessions#: sessions of courts of
justice.
[98] #Yeomanry review#: a review of the county militia.
[99] #Don#: a nickname for a university professor.
[100] #Sirens#: sea-nymphs who enticed sailors into their
power by their singing, and then devoured them.
THE OLD BOY APPROVETH MOVING ON.
Yet why should I, after all, abuse the gadabout propensities of my
countrymen? We are a vagabond nation now, that's certain, for better,
for worse. I am a vagabond; I have been away from home no less
than five distinct times in the last year. The Queen sets us the
example--we are moving on from top to bottom. Little dirty Jack,
who abides in Clement's Inn[101] gateway, and blacks my boots for a
penny, takes his month's hop-picking[102] every year as a matter of
course. Why shouldn't he? I am delighted at it. I love vagabonds,
only I prefer poor to rich ones;-couriers[103] and ladies' maids,
imperials[104] and travelling carriages are an abomination unto me--I
cannot away with them. But for dirty Jack, and every good fellow who,
in the words of the capital French song, moves about,
"Comme le limacon,
Portant tout son bagage,
Ses meubles, sa maison,"[105]
on his own back, why, good luck to them, and many a merry road-side
adventure, and steaming supper in the chimney-corners of road-side
inns, Swiss chalets,[106] Hottentot kraals,[107] or wherever else they
like to go. So having succeeded in contradicting myself in my first
chapter (which gives me great hopes that you will all go on, and think
me a good fellow, notwithstanding my crotchets), I shall here shut up
for the present, and consider my ways; having resolved to "sar' it
out,"[108] as we say in the Vale, "holus bolus,"[109] just as it
comes, and then you'll probably get the truth out of me.
[101] #Clement's Inn#: formerly a college and residence for
law students in London. It is now given up to law offices.
[102] #Hop-picking#: all the vagabonds of London go to Kent
and Surrey in the autumn to pick hops for the farmers,
regarding the work as a kind of vacation frolic.
[103] #Courier#: a person hired by wealthy travellers to go in
advance and engage rooms at hotels, etc.
[104] #Imperial#: the best seat on a French diligence or
stage-coach.
[105] #Comme le limacon#, etc.: like the snail, carrying all
his baggage, his furniture, and his house.
[106] #Chalet# (shal-ay'): a Swiss herdsman's hut.
[107] #Kraal#: a Hottentot hut or village.
[108] #"Sar' it out"#: deal it out.
[109] #"Holus bolus"#: all at once.