SCHOOLDAYS AT ETON
“Where the Provost at that time was Sir Henry Wotton, a
person that was not only a fine gentleman himself, but very
well skilled in the art of making others so.”—ROBERT BOYLE’S
_Philaretus_.
In December 1634, after nearly seven years’ absence, the Earl of Cork and
his family returned to the House of Lismore. They had not been gathered
there, as a family, since the April of 1628, when the Earl and his wife
and daughters set out on their journey to London. But Parliament was
adjourned, and Dungarvan and his wife were with them, and everything
pointed to their spending Christmas in their home of homes: “And there,
God willing, wee intend,” wrote the Earl the day before they left
Dublin to Lady Clifford at Skipton Castle in Yorkshire—“to keep a merry
Christmas among our neighbors, and to eate to the noble family of Skipton
in fatt does and Carps, and to drinke your healthe in the best wyne
wee can gett....” His new daughter-in-law, he says, “looks, and likes
Ireland, very well.” She was every day winning the affection and respect
of the “best sort of people”—her husband’s and her father-in-law’s most
of all. Incidentally—for he was treading on delicate ground owing to the
family connection between Wentworth and the Cliffords—the Earl mentions
that he is being “sharply persued” in his Majesty’s Court of the Star
Chamber about his titles to the college and lands of Youghal; and he is
only sorry that “this attempt” should be made upon him just at the time
of his daughter-in-law’s arrival in Ireland.
It is not two hundred miles by rail from Dublin to Lismore; but in those
days travelling was slow and difficult; and the Cork cavalcade—the family
coach and the gay company of horsemen surrounding it—were four days
upon the road. Robert Boyle never forgot that eventful journey.[34] The
English daughter-in-law and her attendant lady, and the old Earl and
all his five sons, were of the party, the youngest, Robert, not eight
years old. Each night they “lay” at hospitable houses on the road, and
all went well till, on the fourth day after passing Clonmell, as they
were crossing the “Four Miles Water”, their coach was overturned in
mid-stream. Robyn remembered every detail of the adventure: how he had
been left sitting alone in the coach, “with only a post-boy,” and how one
of his father’s gentlemen, “very well horsed,” recognising the danger,
rode alongside and insisted on carrying the little fellow—very unwilling
to leave the apparent safety of the inside of the coach—in his arms over
the rapid water; how the water proved so much swifter and deeper than
anybody had imagined that horses and riders were “violently hurried down
the stream,” and the unloaded and empty coach was quickly overturned.
The coach horses struggled till they broke their harnesses, and with
difficulty saved themselves by swimming.
So much for the memory of a little sensitive eight-year-old. The Earl’s
diary record is brief and to the point. His coach was “overthrown”,
his horses were “in danger of drowning”, but they all, God be praised,
arrived safely at Lismore, and the journey had cost him £24.
Christmas was kept at Lismore, and the last two days of the old year at
Castle Lyons, where the Earl’s son-in-law, Barrymore, feasted them most
liberally. He could scarcely have done less, after that eighteen-months’
visit to the Earl’s town house in Dublin. And so this year ended.
With the New Year 1635 came the Claytons from Cork, bringing Mary and
little Peggie on a visit to their father. A week or two later the
Earl went back alone to Dublin for the last session of Parliament,
leaving Dungarvan and his wife to keep house at Lismore; and the four
boys—Kynalmeaky, Broghill, Frank and little Robyn—were all left under the
charge of their tutor, Mr. Wilkinson, who was also the Earl’s chaplain.
It was a severe winter: the very day after the Earl set out from Lismore
there began to fall at Clonmell “the greatest snow that ever any man
now living did see in Ireland.” The House of Lismore must have stood,
very white and quiet, looking down over the precipice into the swirling
Blackwater below it. All about it, white and silent too, lay the gardens
and orchards, the fishponds and park lands, and the wooded wildernesses;
and the mountains beyond were hidden in falling snows. The roads could
not have been easy riding between Clonmell and Dublin, but the Earl and
his servants reached Dublin in safety, and he sent back by Dungarvan’s
man “two new books of Logick” for the versatile Kynalmeaky’s further
education.
Kildare had come back to Dublin also, and not too soon; for he and his
young wife were to make up their differences over a little grave. Early
in March their eldest little girl died under the Earl’s roof in Dublin;
and a few days later Lady Kildare’s boy was born—the “young master” of
Wentworth’s vindictive letter to Laud.
But spring was at hand, and the Lismore orchards were in blossom. The
Earl was busy buying more lands and manors to be settled on Robyn, and
writing to his English friends about a “ffrench gent” to accompany his
sons Kynalmeaky and Broghill as “governour” on their foreign travels.
Great sheet-winged hawks, also, were brought “to fflye for our sports”;
and in July Lord Clifford and his suite arrived from Yorkshire on
a visit to Lismore. The Earl of Cork was in his element. A great
hunting-party had been arranged, and the huntsmen filled the lodge in the
park. Dungarvan and his wife—Lord Clifford’s daughter and heiress—the
Barrymores, and Katharine and Arthur Jones, were all gathered at Lismore.
Lord Clifford was to see this Munster home at its very best; its terraces
and rose-gardens aflame with colour, its orchards heavy with fruit,
its pigeon-houses and watermills and fishponds and the great turreted
walls—all the “re-edifications” in fact, that had been the work of years.
And the seventeenth-century interior must have been as imposing; for
there was furniture of crimson velvet, fringed with silver, and furniture
of black and scarlet velvet brocade. The walls were hung with tapestry,
the floors were spread with Turkey rugs. There were high-backed chairs
and low-backed chairs, and Indian embroideries, and “long cushions” for
the embrasured window-seats. The Earl’s hospitable tables were furnished
with fish, beef, venison, and huge all-containing pies—to be washed
down by Bordeaux wine, usquebagh, and _aqua vitæ_; and they groaned
also beneath their burden of silver;—flagons and trenchers, “covered
salts,” “costerns,” kettles and ladles of silver and silver gilt; while
the “ewers and basons” in the bedrooms were of silver, the great gilded
beds hung with scarlet cloth and silver lace and the ceilings of the
children’s nursery and the Earl’s “studdie” were of “fretwork”—their
walls of “Spanish white”.
Katharine and Arthur Jones went back to Athlone early in September.
The hunting-party was dispersed, and the House of Lismore was emptying
again. It must have been on one of those autumn days before Katharine
left Lismore that there happened the little “foolish” incident about
Robyn and the plums: an incident which the elder sister would tell, long
afterwards, when Robert Boyle had made his world-wide reputation, and she
and he were growing old together in the house in Pall Mall.[35]
Dungarvan’s wife had already made a special pet of Francis, who was
indeed a lovable and happy-tempered boy. But it was Robyn who was his
sister Kate’s favourite. She seems to have felt a special tenderness
for this little fellow with a little independent character of his own,
so different from all his brothers: a little fellow with a stutter,
attributed by his family to his habit of mimicking some children with
whom he had been allowed to play; a little fellow who was “studious” at
eight years old, and so hopelessly and tactlessly truthful that the old
Earl—fond old disciplinarian that he was—had never been able to “find him
in a lie in all his life.”
And so with the plums. Lady Dungarvan, in delicate health, was being
petted by all the family; and Katharine Jones had given “strict orders”
that the fruit of a certain plum tree in the Lismore garden should be
preserved for Lady Dungarvan’s use. Robyn had gone into the garden, and,
“ignoring the prohibition,” had been eating the plums. And when his
sister Kate taxed him, “by way of aggravation,” with having eaten “half
a dozen plums,”—“Nay, truly, sister,” answered he simply to her, “I have
eaten half a score.”[36]
Mr. Wilkinson and a certain “Mownsier” had between them taught Robyn
to speak some French and Latin and to write a fair hand; and now that
he was in his ninth year, and Frank twelve years old, they were to be
sent to Eton. The Earl had been in correspondence for some time with his
old friend Sir Henry Wotton, not only about this matter, but about a
“governour” who should take Kynalmeaky and Broghill abroad. Accordingly
on September 9, 1635, a few days after their sister Katharine and Arthur
Jones had left Lismore, Francis and Robert, with Carew their personal
servant, under the charge of the Earl’s own confidential servant,
Mr. Thomas Badnedge, left Lismore for Youghal, there to embark for
England, “to be schooled and bredd at Eaton.” Badnedge was to carry
the purse, with £50 in it, and if he wanted any more was to draw upon
Mr. Burlamachy, the Lord Mayor of London. And the Earl gave the boys
at parting £3 between them: “the great God of Heaven”, he wrote in his
diary, “bless, guyde and protect them!”
It was not till September 24 that the little party actually sailed from
Youghal, for they waited a whole week for a wind, and then they were
“beat back again” by a storm. But at last, “though the Irish coasts were
then sufficiently infested with Turkish gallies,” they reached Bristol in
safety, having touched at Ilfracombe and Minehead on the way. There was a
short stay “to repose and refresh themselves” at Bristol, and then their
journey was “shaped” direct for Eton College. It was of course a journey
by coach-roads; and their first sight of English scenery was in late
September.
They arrived at Eton on October 2; and Mr. Badnedge delivered the two
boys safely into the charge of Sir Henry Wotton. Their “tuicon” was to be
undertaken by Mr. John Harrison, the “chief schoolmaster.”
Shortly after their arrival, Francis penned a little letter to his
father, the Earl of “Korke,” to be carried back to Ireland by one of
their escort. He began on bended knees with hearty prayers, and went on
to say that he had no news to tell except some things he had observed
on his travels, but these he would leave the bearer of his letter to
narrate, “in regard I am incited by my school exercise.” Sir “Hary
Wutton” had been very kind to them, entertaining them the first day of
their arrival at his own table. He had also put at their disposal “a
chamber of his owne with a bedd furnished afore our own wilbe furnished.”
The young lords at Eton had also been most friendly, especially the Earl
of Peterborough’s son, with whom Frank and Robyn were, for the present,
to dine and sup. And there was a postscript to say that Mr. Badnedge had
been very kind “in all our travels,” and had sent them a supply of linen
from London after their arrival, for which they were “much bound to him.”
A few days later Mr. John Harrison, the “chief schoolmaster,” also wrote
to the Earl of Cork, a letter concise, dignified, and satisfactory.
He confirmed the arrival at Eton of the Earl’s two sons, “whoe, as they
indured their journeye both by sea and land, beyond what a man would
expect from such little ones so, since their arrival, the place seemed to
be suiting them wonderfully well”. He tells the Earl that “Mr. Provost”
had been so kind as to put the boys under his care, and lets the Earl
know, in parenthesis, that he, John Harrison, is at present the “Rector”
of the school: “I will carefully see them supplyed with such things as
their occasions in the colledge shall require, and endeavour to sett them
forward in learninge the best I can.”
But it was from Carew,[37] the boys’ personal servant, that the Earl was
to hear all about everything. Carew’s first letter touched lightly on
the “long and tedious navigation and great travels by land,” and went
straight to the subject of subjects—“my two young masters.” They had been
there only a few days, but they were “very well beloved for their civill
and transparent carriage towards all sorts, and specially my sweet Mr.
Robert, who gained the love of all.” Sir Henry Wotton had been “much
taken with him for his discourse of Ireland and of his travails, and
he admired that he would observe or take notice of those things that he
discoursed off.”
Then followed an account of Sir Henry Wotton’s kind reception of the
boys, and the lending of his furnished chamber till their own should be
ready: “We injoy it yett,” says Carew, “which is a great favor.” The boys
had dined several times already with Sir Henry Wotton. They were very
“jocond”, although they showed a “studious desire”, and they had “very
carefull and reverend masters.” There is just a hint of home-sickness,
a longing for the sight of the old Earl and the brothers and sisters
and the roughly splendid Irish life; but Carew quickly goes on to tell
the “Order of the Colledge,” especially “touching my young masters’
essence.” The boys dine in hall, with the rest of the boarders;[38] and
the Earl of Northampton’s four sons, and the two sons of the Earl of
Peterborough, with other “Knights’ sons” are at the same table. “They
sitt permiscously—noe observing of place or qualitie”; and at night they
supped in their own rooms, Mr. Francis and Mr. Robert supping with the
Earl of Peterborough’s sons, providing, of course, their own commons.
Carew mentions the “fasting nights” and the fact that the College allows
no meat to be cooked on Fridays or Saturdays; and he hints that the
College commissariat requires a good deal of supplementing. Master Robert
is too busy with his lessons to write a letter, but sends his love and
duty: “They are upp every morning at half an hour afore 6, and soe to
scoole to prayers.”
Sir Henry Wotton, the Provost of Eton[39] of that day, was nearing the
end of his eventful, chequered life when Robert Boyle, not yet nine years
old, came under his care. He was indeed a contemporary of the old Earl,
and a Kentish man as well—one of a fine old Kentish stock; but no two men
could have been more unlike. He had taken his B.A. at Oxford, and with a
slender purse set out on his seven years’ wanderings in European cities,
the very same year in which Mr. Richard Boyle had turned the lucky ring
on his finger and landed on Irish shores. But that had been forty-seven
years before—back in the mists; and the years between those youthful
wanderings and this pleasant old age in the Provost’s lodging at Eton
had been years of risky secret missions and ill-paid political intrigue.
He had been private secretary to Essex in London, private correspondent
abroad, Ambassador at Venice. In those years, many a fine intellect with
big ambitions had gone under. Sir Henry had come off better than many,
in spite of his slender means and an undeniable weakness for libraries
and laboratories and picture galleries in the intervals of diplomacy. It
was he who had been sent by the Duke of Tuscany on the secret mission
to Edinburgh to tell James VI that he was going to be poisoned, and to
carry with him the little packet of Italian antidotes, not known at
that time in the Scottish pharmacopœia. He had stayed three months with
the Scottish King; and no wonder that when James ascended the throne of
England Sir Henry Wotton was one of the men then in London whom the King
desired to see. He was a favourite at Court; and his lifelong homage to
the Princess Elizabeth, the unhappy Queen of Bohemia, is well known.[40]
He had risen to great things, and might have risen to greater still if it
had not been for one brilliant Latin epigram written in an album. Even
King James, with pleasant memories of a packet of antidotes and a most
delightful guest in Stirling Castle, found it hard to forgive the Latin
epigram—“a merriment,” poor Wotton had called it—written in an album in
an indiscreet moment many years before, and officiously forwarded from
Augsburg to the Court of London: “_An Ambassador is an honest man sent to
lie abroad for the good of his country_.” It is said to have ruined Sir
Henry Wotton’s diplomatic chances; and when, after some other missions,
he came home in 1624, it was as a penniless man still, with plans of
literary work and a sufficient stock of memories grave and gay. He had
consorted with princes and statesmen, with artists, men of science, and
men of letters. He had worked for Essex and known Raleigh, and Francis
Bacon was his cousin. Among his friends abroad he had counted Beza,
Casaubon, Arminius and Kepler. He had watched Kepler at work in his
laboratory, and he had supplied Bacon with facts. And when Bacon sent him
three copies of his _Novum Organum_ when it first appeared, Sir Henry
sent one of the copies to Kepler.
When Thomas Murray died, and Sir Henry Wotton was selected, out of many
candidates, for the Provostship of Eton, he was so poor that he was
obliged to borrow money to enable him to settle down there. King James
would have granted him a dispensation, but he preferred to conform to the
rule that the Provost of Eton must be a man in Holy Orders. He had been
duly ordained deacon, and, being a man of liberal views, had steered “a
middle way between Calvinism and Arminianism.”[41]
When the two young sons of the Earl of Cork arrived at Eton, Sir Henry
Wotton had been Provost for ten years, and Eton could scarcely imagine
itself without him. With a royal pension in addition to his Provostship,
and assisted by a strong staff of Fellows of the College—the learned
Hales, John Harrison and the rest—he was taking life easily, in the
evening of his days, among his books and curios, his Italian pictures,
and those manuscripts—biographies of Donne and Luther, and the History
of England,—which he always meant to finish and never did. He was not
quite so active as when he had first come among them with his new views
of teaching, and had put up the picture of Venice, where he had lived
so long as Ambassador, and had hung on the wooden pillars of the lower
schools his “choicely drawn” portraits of Greek and Latin orators and
poets and historians, for the little Eton boys to gaze at with round
English eyes; but his familiar figure was still a daily presence, coming
and going amongst them in his furred and embroidered gown, “dropping
some choyce Greek or Latin apophthegm” for the benefit of the youngsters
in class. He was still a “constant cherisher” of schoolboyhood, taking
the “hopeful youths” into his own especial care, having them at his own
hospitable table, picking out the plodding boys and the boys of genius,
and himself teaching best in his own memorable talk. He liked to indulge
in reminiscences of Italy—“that delicat Piece of the Worlde”; and he
sometimes looked wistfully Londonwards, though in his gentle, deprecatory
way he spoke of it, especially in November, as a “fumie citie.” In his
last years he nursed hopes that he might succeed to the mastership of
the Savoy; meantime, from his Provost’s Lodging, he could look across
the “meandering Thames and sweete meadows,”[42] to the great pile of
Windsor Castle in its “antient magnificence”; and he read and ruminated
and smoked—he smoked a little too much, according to his friend Izaak
Walton—and counted his “idle hours not idly spent” when he could sit
quietly fishing with Izaak Walton in the river-bend above the shooting
fields, then, as now, known as Black Pots. When Robert Boyle went to Eton
in 1635, to be an Eton boy meant not only being “grounded in learning” by
such men as Hales and Harrison, but being “schooled and bred” under the
daily influence of this soft, rich, delightful personality.
The two boys were known in the school as Boyle _A_ and Boyle _I_: Robert
was Boyle _I_. According to Carew, they must have grown with astonishing
rapidity during their first months at Eton. Mr. Francis was not only
tall, but “very proportionable in his limbs,” and grew daily liker to
his brother, Lord Dungarvan. He was not so fond of his books as “my most
honoured and affectionate Mr. Robert, who was as good at his lessons as
boys double his age.” An usher, “a careful man”, was helping them with
their lessons, and Carew was keeping an eye on the usher. Versions and
dictamens in French and Latin filled their time, and Carew could not
persuade them to “affect the Irish,” though Robert seems to have shown a
faint, intermittent interest in that language.[43] As for Mr. Robert, he
was “very fatt, and very jovial, and pleasantly merry, and of ye rarest
memory that I ever knew. He prefers Learninge afore all other virtues and
pleasures. The Provost does admire him for his excellent genius.” They
had acted a play in the College, and Robert had been among those chosen
to take part in it. “He came uppon ye stage,” wrote Carew, exultant, to
the Earl of Cork; “he had but a mute part, but for the gesture of his
body and the order of his pace, he did bravely.”
The little fellow was not yet nine years old, and his stutter must
have made it highly desirable that the part should be “mute”; but “Mr.
Provost” had already made choice of a “very sufficient man” to teach
both the boys to play the viol and to sing, and also to “helpe my Master
Robert’s defect in pronontiation.” Carew was afraid the study of music,
which “elevats the spirits,” might hinder their more serious lessons;
though up to that time the conduct of both boys had been exemplary. They
had said their prayers regularly and been equally polite to everybody,
and were very neat in their “aparelling, kembing, and washing.” The elder
brother had been laid up with “a cowld that he tooke in the scoole,”
which Carew attributed entirely to the fact that he had outgrown his
clothes; and Mr. Perkins, the London tailor, had been “mighty backward”
in sending their new suits. Even with a bad cold, Frank was his usual
pleasant, merry self; and when Mr. Provost, according to his custom,
prescribed “a little phisique,” the boy drank it cheerfully to the last
drop—and “rejected it immediately after.” Sir Henry Wotton wrote himself
to the Earl, describing the whole episode with an accuracy of detail
worthy of Kepler’s laboratory.
Meantime, Sir Henry himself had assured the Earl that the “spiritay
Robyn’s” voice and pronunciation had been taken in hand by the Master of
the Choristers. Robyn also had caught cold that first winter at Eton. He
had “taken a conceit against his breakfast, being alwaies curious of his
meat, and so going fasting to church.” But on this occasion, such was the
spiritay Robyn’s popularity, that the whole College seems to have risen
in protest against Mr. Provost’s prescription of “a little phisique.” And
Robert recovered without it, and “continued still increasing in virtues.”
It is somewhat surprising that the younger brother should have been the
favourite, for it was Francis Boyle who had the “quick, apprehensive
wit,” and whose delight was in hunting and horsemanship; and it was Robyn
who dissuaded him, exhorting his elder brother to learning in his youth,
“for,” says he, “there can be nothing more profitable and honourable.”
With his “fayre amiable countenance,” this child of nine, according to
the ebullient Carew, was “wise, discreet, learned and devout; and not
such devotion as is accustomed in children, but withall in Sincerity he
honours God and prefers Him in all his actions.”[44]
It is very certain that the spiritay Robyn was not fond of games. There
is no enthusiasm for active sports in his _Philaretus_, not even of a
certain sport that the boys engaged in on winter evenings in the hall,
for which every recent comer was obliged to “find the candles”; and a
very expensive time for candles it was, according to Carew. But Mr.
Robert learnt to “play on music and to sing”, and “to talk Latin he
has very much affected.” And it speaks very well for both Frank and
Robyn that, their tastes being so unlike, they remained such excellent
friends. “Never since they arrived,” according to Carew, had two ill
words passed between them; which he thought was rare to see, “specially
when the younger exceeds the elder in some qualities.” Some of the noble
brothers in the College were continually quarrelling; but “the peace of
God is with my masters.” It had been noticed even at the Fellows’ table:
“Never were sweeter and civiller gents seen in the Colledge than Mr.
Boyles.” The only thing in which they do not seem to have excelled was in
letter-writing. Master Frank could not write to the Earl because his hand
shook; and Master Robyn could not write because he had hurt his thumb.
And so winter and spring passed, and the summer came, and with it
“breaking-time” at Eton. Mr. Provost, Mr. Harrison, and everybody else
went away. The two boys, and Carew with them, spent their holidays with
their sister Lettice in Sussex. It could not have been a cheerful visit,
though Carew assured the Earl that there was “nothing wanting to afford
a good and pleasant entertainment if my honourable Lady had not been
visited with her continuall guest, griefe and melancholy.” So extremely
melancholy was the Lady Lettice Goring during this visit that it made
the two boys “cry often to looke upon her.” And yet they must have made
a pretty pair to gladden the eyes of an invalid woman. For Mr. Perkins,
the London tailor, had sent them some fine new clothes—little shirts
with laced bands and cuffs, two scarlet suits without coats, and two
cloth-of-silver doublets.
Robert Boyle’s own recollections of Eton were written a good many years
after he left it. He always remembered with gratitude the kindness
of Mr. John Harrison, in whose house, in that chamber that was so
long in furnishing, the two boys lived—except for some holidays at
“breaking-time,” usually spent in Sussex—from October 1635 to November
1638.
From the very beginning John Harrison must have recognised that in “Boyle
_I_” he had no ordinary boy to deal with. He saw a “spiritay” little
fellow, with a fair, amiable countenance, a slight stammer, which the
child did his best to amend, and the unstudied civilities of manner of a
little prince. According to Boyle himself, Mr. Harrison saw “some aptness
and much willingness” in him to learn; and this chief schoolmaster
resolved to teach his pupil by “all the gentlest ways of encouragement.”
He began by often dispensing with his attendance at school in ordinary
school hours, and taking the trouble to teach him “privately and
familiarly in his own chamber.”
“He would often, as it were, cloy him with fruit and sweetmeats, and
those little dainties that age is greedy of, that by preventing the want,
he might lessen both his value and desire of them. He would sometimes
give him, unasked, play-days, and oft bestow upon him such balls and tops
and other implements of idleness as he had taken away from others that
had unduly used them. He would sometimes commend others before him to
rouse his emulation, and oftentimes give him commendations before others
to engage his endeavours to deserve them. Not to be tedious, he was
careful to instruct him in such an affable, kind, and gentle way, that he
easily prevailed with him to consider studying not so much as a duty of
obedience to his superiors, but as a way to purchase for himself a most
delightsome and invaluable good.”[45]
All which means that Mr. Harrison was making a very interesting
experiment, and that his system happened to succeed in the case of Robert
Boyle. The boy learned his “scholar’s task” very easily; and his spare
hours were spent so absorbedly over the books he was reading that Mr.
Harrison was sometimes obliged to “force him out to play.” And what were
the books that were read with such zest? It was, Robert Boyle says, the
accidental perusal of _Quintus Curtius_ that first made him in love with
“other than pedantick books”; and in after life he used to assert that
he owed more to _Quintus Curtius_ than ever Alexander did: that he had
gained more from the history of Alexander’s conquests than ever Alexander
had done from the conquests themselves.[46]
His other recollections of his Eton schooldays are for the most part of
accidents that happened to him there. He was not so good a horseman as
his brother Frank. Once he fell from his horse, and the animal trod so
near to his throat as to make a hole in his neckband, “which he long
after preserved for a remembrance.” Another time his nag took fright
as he was riding through a town, and reared upright on his hinder feet
against a wall; and the boy just saved himself by slipping off. Yet
a third time he nearly met his death by a “potion” given him “by an
apothecary’s error”; and it is interesting, in the light of what happened
and did not happen in Boyle’s later life, to hear that “this accident
made him long after apprehend more from the physicians than the disease,
and was possibly the occasion that made him afterwards so inquisitively
apply himself to the study of physick, that he might have the less need
of them that profess it.”[47] The fourth and last of this almost Pauline
enumeration of disasters was the falling, one evening, of the greater
part of the wall of the boys’ bedroom in Mr. Harrison’s house. The two
brothers had gone early to their room; Robyn was already tucked into the
big four-post bed, with its “feather bedd, boulster, and two pillows,”
and the curtains of “blew perpetuana with lace and frenge”,[48] and Frank
was talking with some other boys round the fire when, without a moment’s
warning, the wall of the room fell in, the ceiling with it, carrying bed,
chairs, books and furniture from the room above. A bigger boy rescued
Frank from the debris and dust, the chair in which he had been sitting
broken to pieces, and his clothes torn off his back; and Robyn, the
future chemist, peeping from the blew-perpetuana curtains, remembered
to wrap his head in the sheet, so that it might serve “as a strainer,
through which none but the purer air could find a passage.”
It is observable that there is no mention of any of those accidents in
the letters to the Earl of Cork from either the Provost or the boys’
personal servant, Carew. Perhaps it was as well that the Earl, much
harassed at home, should not be told everything that was happening at
Eton. As it was, he knew too much. Some go-between—Mr. Perkins, the
tailor, or somebody equally officious—must have told the Earl in what
manner Carew—“poor unmeriting me”, as Carew called himself in one of
his fascinating letters to the Earl—had been utilising his idle hours
by the meandering Thames. Frank and Robyn, and Carew with them, were
spending their holidays with Lady Lettice Goring, when one morning Sir
Henry Wotton, sitting in his study at Eton, received a letter from
the Earl of Cork. The contents came as a thunderbolt. “Truly, my good
Lord,” Sir Henry Wotton wrote back to the Earl, “I was shaken with
such an amazement at the first percussion thereof, that, till a second
perusal, I was doubtfull whether I had readd aright.” For everybody in
the college was so persuaded of young Mr. Carew’s discretion and temper
and zeal in his charge, and “whole carriadge of himself,” that it would
be “harde to stamp us with any new impression.” However, Mr. Provost had
somewhat reluctantly put away his pipe and “bestowed a Daye in a little
Inquisitiveness.” And he had found that the Earl, in Dublin, was quite
right; that between Carew and a certain “yonge Mayed, dawghter to our
under baker—” and Mr. Provost could not but own that she was pretty—there
had passed certain civil, not to say amorous, language. The old Provost
was evidently disposed to look leniently on this particular foolish
pair. Had he not himself once, in his youth, written a little poem which
began—
O faithless world, and thy most faithless part
A woman’s heart!
...
Why was she born to please, or I to trust
Words writ in dust?[49]
However, Sir Henry told the Earl he was going to talk to Carew on his
return from Sussex, and warn him how careful, in his position, he ought
to be; and he would write again to the Earl after seeing Carew. But, in
the meantime he wished to reserve judgment: “For truely theare can not be
a more tender attendant about youre sweete children.”
And after all news travelled slowly. Those little love passages were
already six months old: “Tyme enough, I dare swere”—wrote the old
diplomatist, sitting alone in his study, with his Titian and his Bassanos
looking down upon him—“to refrigerat more love than was ever betweene
them.”