My vacation passed very quietly till within ten days of its termination,
at which time Miss Stanley came to stay at the Heronry. I soon went
over to call, and found everything much as it was formerly, except that
the pedantic cousin was not mentioned. I soon after learnt that he had
behaved very discreditably at Oxford and had been obliged to leave, and
that his match had been broken off by Miss Stanley.
It is a curious fact, but it is one that experience has taught us, that
in almost every case where a man assumes a superiority over all others,
and is always endeavouring to expose weak points or want of knowledge in
others whilst he thrusts his only slender information forward, that man
is an impostor, and, if found out, will generally "go to the bad." This
was the case with Snipson, with Stanley, and with many others we have
known; and, if others will recall their own experiences, we believe they
also will find they are led to the same conclusion. There is no
necessity for a really clever man to be always blowing his own trumpet;
his actual works will show what he has in him; whereas a shallow-pated
impostor is always trying by tricks to arrive at a notoriety to which he
never could attain by fair work and genuine competition, and so loses no
opportunity of taking a prominent position for want of assumption.
I found that Miss Stanley had seen Howard several times in London, and
pronounced him "charming." It was supposed that Howard would have to go
to Southampton on some duty, and if so he was expected to pass a few
days at the Heronry. Now, had it been any one else, I believe I should
have been jealous, for, although I had ceased to be spoony on Miss
Stanley, yet I liked her society, and should not have felt happy in
knowing she was much with any one else. He, however, was an exception.
Each time I met Howard I found that my latest experience had given me
the capacity to appreciate in him some quality which had before escaped
my observation, whereas when I met other men whom I had known when I was
a boy, and of whom I had thought most highly, I found them to be rough,
uncultivated, and unintellectual--the change really being in myself, not
in them.
I looked forward to Howard's visit to the Heronry, for I hoped then to
see more of him and to get more at his mind than I had been able to do
in the bustle and gaiety of London. I also wanted to compare his
knowledge of mathematics, etc, with mine, in order to see whether the
course at the Academy that I had gone through was as sound as it used to
be a few years previously.
It wanted only five days to the date at which I had to leave for
Woolwich, when Howard came down to the Heronry, and I was asked over to
dine and stop the next day. Before I had been half an hour in the house
I discovered that Howard and Helen Stanley seemed to be equally pleased
with each other, and I felt that my presence was not always looked upon
as agreeable. I was not, therefore, surprised when on the next day
Howard told me in the strictest confidence that he and Miss Stanley were
engaged, and that they were going to be married when he was a captain,
which he hoped to be in about a year.
It being the object of this tale to describe the life of a Woolwich
cadet thirty years ago, we must leave our friend Howard and the charming
Helen at the Heronry, and return once more to the busy scene of my early
labours and competition at Woolwich.
On returning to the Academy for my fifth half-year I found I was
promoted to corporal, and was third senior. This promotion gave me a
pair of epaulettes, which I put on, and wore with great pride. It was
the first promotion I had received, and I can fairly say that no step in
rank or position that fortune has since favoured me with ever produced
one-tenth of the pleasure that I experienced at eighteen years of age in
being made a corporal.
My life at Woolwich was now very agreeable. I had made the acquaintance
of friends in the neighbourhood, and also in London. I usually went on
leave from Saturday afternoon to Sunday evening, staying during the time
with friends. At the Academy, being a corporal gave me certain
privileges and authority, whilst every neux was to all intents and
purposes my slave. I had every prospect of taking a high position in my
batch, and after four months at the Arsenal, in the practical class, I
should obtain my commission, and start as an officer in either the
Artillery or Engineers.
The friends at whose houses I visited congratulated me on my excellent
prospects, and seemed to think I was excessively lucky in having such a
chance before me.
One of my friends was a retired colonel, who had been through the whole
of the Peninsular war, was at Waterloo, and had left the service many
years. He was a soldier of the old school, considered the service
everything, and that there was only one profession for a gentleman, viz,
the army.
After dinner, and when he and I were _tete-a-tete_, he used to indulge
in various hints and opinions as regards the conduct and character of an
officer and a gentleman.
"An officer," he used to say, "must be the most honourable and
gentlemanly of men. He must resent instantly the slightest insult. If
a man even looks insultingly at you, have him out at once. If the day
ever does come (as I fear the radical tendency of the age seems to
indicate) that duelling is done away with, a snob and a bully will be
able to ride roughshod over a gentleman, and there will be no redress.
An officer, too, must learn his profession. It is a mistake to think
that an officer should be above his work. He ought to know everything
and do everything better than his men. More than once in my service,
when I commanded a troop of Dragoons, I have taken off my coat and shown
a private how to clean a horse.
"An officer, too, ought to be able to take his wine, and yet show no
signs of it. I can't recommend you any royal road to this," said the
colonel, "except practice. I should like to tell you, also," he
continued, "that many young officers make or mar their reputation daring
their first night at mess. I remember once in my old regiment there was
a young cornet joined us, who looked all right, and talked all right,
but at mess he had to carve some beef for the colonel. He helped the
colonel, and sent him a plate laden with two thick slices of beef, and a
lump of fat big enough to choke a dog. `Good heavens!' said the
colonel, `what does that young fellow mean by sending me this mass of
food? Does he not know I can come again if I want more? Take my plate
away; the fellow has spoiled my dinner!'
"We were now all rather doubtful about our new cornet, who, however, had
plenty of money, and had come from one of our first public schools; and
sure enough our suspicions proved to be correct--the cloven hoof had
peeped out in the overladen plate of beef. The cornet proved to be the
only son of a retired contract butcher, who had made a large fortune
during the war, and had retired to the country and had tried to make his
son a gentleman, but he couldn't do it, sir; the plate of beef exposed
him."
These and other similar precepts were instilled into me by my old friend
daring the time that I took my first practice under his tuition of
testing the strength of my head _versus_ the strength of his port wine,
and I am happy to say that I gained the colonel's approval one Saturday
evening in an unexpected manner as follows:--
A party of four had been at dinner, all military men. We had sat over
our wine a fair time, and, charmed with the conversation, I had done
full justice to the port. The colonel then proposed a rubber of whist,
at which game he was an adept, and required me to take a hand. I played
a fair game of whist for a youngster, and so made up the fourth.
Luckily I was on that night a good card-holder, and was the colonel's
partner, and we won. He was delighted, for his whole heart was in the
game. When we broke up he gave me a pat on the back and said, "Shepard,
I always thought well of you, but I never formed so high an opinion of
your talents and power as to-night. You may talk about your
examinations in Euclid and mathematics, for which a fellow is crammed
like a parrot for months, as a test of a man's brains and his fitness
for a soldier; I think it's nearly all bosh, and gives no fair test; but
if I see a young man do what you've done to-night, that is, put a bottle
of port under his waistcoat and afterwards play a quiet, steady rubber,
and remember whether the twelfth or thirteenth card is the best, I know
that fellow has a good head. I believe there is not one youngster in
twenty can do this now-a-day. They are all weeds--haven't the stamina
and backbone they used to have--and the Englishman is degenerating to a
great extent, I believe, in consequence of the inordinate use of
tobacco."
Daring the present half-year I had taken up cricket, and was very
successful as a "fielder," though my batting was not first-rate. I was
good enough, however, to play in the Eleven against the Officers of the
Artillery--a match we played each year--and made double figures in my
score, and caught out two of the officers.
Although I was nearly always on leave from Saturday to Sunday for the
"whole shay," as it was termed, yet I on one occasion did not go. The
result was that I had command of the first company at church-parade, and
marched past on the barrack-field before going to church. Several times
I had been in the ranks when we had marched past on Sundays, but this
was the first time I had ever commanded the company. There was a great
crowd to see us march past and to hear the band, and the company was
praised for its steadiness. I remembered well my feelings as a
schoolboy when I saw a cadet in a similar position to that I now
occupied, and I regretted that I had not now the same delight in being
where I was that I fancied formerly I should have. It was not a want of
enthusiasm, for I had still plenty of that left; but I felt as if I were
performing a mere act of business, and was more occupied in seeing that
the ranks kept line and proper distance than I was in the thought of
commanding the company.
Somehow I had grown to understand that hard work and thought were the
means to all success, and that now, when I happened to be senior
corporal, it was merely in consequence of others being absent, and that
I had attained this position by hard work. I must confess I felt
disappointed with myself, for I did not experience one-hundredth part of
the pleasure I should have felt had it been possible to transfer me
instantly from a schoolboy at Hostler's to the position I now occupied.
One little incident, however, as we were marching off, did gave me
temporary gratification. As I gave to the company the words "Right
turn!" "Left wheel!" and we marched across the gravel to the chapel, I
passed close to three of Mr Hostler's masters, who were there with his
boys. There was not a face among the boys I recognised. All had
changed; but the masters I knew, and I saw they had pointed me out to
the youngsters. For a moment the misery of my life at Hostler's came
across me, and a vivid remembrance of the sneering self-sufficiency of
one of these tutors, as he tried to impress upon me that I was too
stupid to ever learn mathematics. I muttered to myself "Pig-headed
idiot!" as I recalled this man's proceeding, and now noticed a sort of
self-complacency in his manner as he was probably explaining to
Hostler's boys that he had trained me for Woolwich.
This my fifth half-year seemed to pass more quickly than a week did when
I was a neux, and we again began to talk about examinations and our
vacation. To me the final trial was now coming, for although we worked
at various subjects in the practical class, yet the work did not count.
There was no examination, and our relative positions in the batch were
unaltered when once we joined the practical class.
I had succeeded in all the drawings I had done during the half-year, and
had adopted a general polishing up in the various branches of study, for
our position in the class for commissions was decided by the amount of
marks we obtained as a total for all subjects.
Day passed after day, and it was within a fortnight of the examination
when I received a letter from Mr Rouse, asking if I would come and pass
Saturday and Sunday with him.
On receipt of this letter I felt ashamed of never having once been to
see the man to whom alone I was indebted for passing into the Academy.
I accepted the invitation, and on Saturday afternoon found myself
sitting in Mr Rouse's drawing-room, chatting with him a sort of shoppy
conversation about examinations, marks, cramming, etc.
Mr Rouse was a man who never disappointed me. Whenever I met him, as I
did often in afterlife, he invariably showed himself a genius. He was
one of those sound thinkers and careful reasoners who are the real
discoverers of truths, and who in almost every case remain unknown and
unhonoured by the world; whilst superficial men, merely veneered with
science by their contact with him, would chatter in learned societies,
and be reported in newspapers, and bowed down to as authorities by the
ignorant, who could not tell the electro-plated from the real metal.
Even when I was a student at Rouse's he used to amuse us by reading out
from the papers descriptions of various matters supposed to be
scientifically written; he would then criticise these and show us that
the writer was evidently unacquainted with his subject, and had written
it at so much per line.
I was glad to find what an interest he had taken in my career at the
Academy; he had noted exactly how I had done at all my examinations, and
he said he was very nearly writing to me daring my third half-year to
come and work with him occasionally, as he feared I might not pass the
probationary examination.
During the evening he put me up to what he called useful dodges in
connexion with working various branches of higher mathematics, and I
found my evening not only interesting, but profitable, as I made several
notes which I could think over and which would be useful to me at my
final examination. He gave me also great encouragement about the
future, and said that he believed the time would come when the officers
of both the Engineers and Artillery would take a higher position in the
scientific and literary world than they then did. "You have a capital
preparatory course at Woolwich," he remarked, "and when you get your
commission you could build on this. It has often struck me that it is
odd how few officers of either Artillery or Engineers have ever made a
mark in the world out of their profession, or have come out as leaders
in science, and this in the future is sure to be remedied."
Mr Rouse was right at the time, but since those days a change has
occurred, the two corps having produced several men distinguished in
subjects not strictly professional.
I returned to the Academy with a feeling of "wound-upness," and occupied
myself in thinking about my coming examination. From being very sickly
as a boy (due I believe entirely to the physicking of my aunt), I had
become strong and particularly healthy, and found I could stand both
mental and bodily work without feeling either much. I took care,
however, to follow Mr Rouse's advice, viz, to work my body by exercise
after I had worked my brain, and to get as much fresh air as possible
after a long bout of "swatting." I never attempted to learn anything
when I felt tired, and never forced myself to work; by these means I
felt certain I got more knowledge into my head than I should have done
had I followed the same plan that several cadets followed of working
nearly all night with wet cloths round their heads and a dozen books
before them.
It was impossible to avoid being anxious about the examination, but I
endeavoured to follow my old plan of not driving off everything to the
last, and then trying to catch up time by working night and day. I had
a sort of idea that the mind was like one's digestion in some respects,
and the way to treat it was to treat it reasonably, and not to expect it
to digest in a week as much mental food as it ought to have in three
months. Some cadets did adopt this plan, and they generally failed, and
not unusually knocked themselves up.
The first day of the examination commenced, and I found the first paper
contained what we should term some very dodgy questions both in
mechanics and trigonometry. I saw through the catches, and brought out
neat answers, which made me tolerably confident they were correct.
Our examinations took nine days altogether, and then day after day the
results came out, and we added our marks together, speculating how the
next list of marks would alter our relative positions. Until the
drawing and mathematical marks came out, I stood twelfth of the batch,
but having obtained within one mark of the full amount in drawing, and
being second in mathematics, I made up a total that made me third of the
batch, which consisted of twenty-five qualified for commissions, or at
least for the practical class, which was to all intents the same thing
as qualifying for commission.
Such a result was to me very satisfactory, and was far beyond what I
dreamed of even in my most sanguine moments during my trials at Mr
Hostler's. If any prophetic genius had hinted to the young gentlemen at
Mr Hostler's that Bob Shepard, who was leaving because he was so stupid
that he could not be taught mathematics, would beat all the boys in the
school, and would succeed in being second in mathematics at the Academy,
this prophet would have found few who put faith in him, for it would
have been considered impossible except by magic. A certain kind of
magic was, however, practised, and this was by means of the system which
Mr Rouse adopted, viz, of calmly reasoning out problems and
deliberating on them, and taking a wide and general view of a subject
instead of trying to follow blindly rules and systems, uninfluenced by
reason or common sense.
There was one small piece of "swagger," as it might be fairly termed,
which I could not resist, and this was to pay a visit to Mr Hostler's
now I had passed all my examinations successfully, and hear what he had
to say for himself. I would not call on Hostler himself, but called to
see a boy whose brother had been a cadet, and who had asked me to have a
look at the youngster at Hostler's.
I was shown into the small drawing-room that I remembered so well.
There was the same table-cover, the same things on the mantelpiece, the
same books, the same pictures as when I went into that room to meet
Hostler, and to be told I must give up all chance of Woolwich, as I had
no head for mathematics or Euclid. It flashed across me that probably
scores of other boys had had their prospects rained in consequence of
being put under the change of selfish and bigoted men, who had only one
system of teaching, and whose method was unsuited to the mind of the boy
on whom they acted. In that room a straw would have turned the scale,
and I might have left that place with a stamp of stupidity on me which I
should never have had the chance of removing all my life, unless, as
really happened, I had gone to Mr Rouse's, and had passed my
examinations well.
As I was thus meditating, the door opened and Mr Hostler came in.
"Ah, Shepard!" he exclaimed, "I am very glad to see you. How are you?"
"Quite well, Mr Hostler. I've called to see young Barnes. Is he in?"
"Oh yes, he's in. I hope you'll come into the schoolroom and see him;
it does the boys good to see a cadet there who has been prepared for the
Academy by me, and who has distinguished himself as you have done. I
feel very proud of it I can tell you!"
"You forget, Mr Hostler; you didn't prepare me for the Academy, but
gave me up as too stupid to learn mathematics."
"Oh, nothing of the kind, Shepard, you're quite mistaken. I gave you
all the groundwork, and you only wanted just a little polishing up,
which could be better done by a private tutor like Rouse than in a large
school like mine, where we work in classes. No, don't think I'm going
to be robbed of the merit of preparing you; besides, you were not three
months with Rouse, and here you were over a year. Facts speak for
themselves. Depend on it, you passed and got on so well just because
you were well grounded here, and saw my system of preparing, which is
good."
I was not then old enough to answer these misrepresentations of
Hostler's, but I knew how false they were, and yet how firmly they would
convince the majority of outsiders that to Hostler was due the merit of
having trained me for Woolwich. I found afterwards that he had told his
boys that I was his special pupil, and that he had also claimed me, in
his sort of advertisement list, as one who had been trained by him.
Such men succeed in the world as a rule, for the general public judge
from superficial evidence, and rarely have the time, if they had the
inclination, to look closely into matters that do not specially affect
their interests.