“Let Nature be your teacher:
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings.
Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things.
We murder to dissect.
Enough of Science and of Art:
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.”--WORDSWORTH.
About six weeks after the beginning of the half, as Tom and Arthur were
sitting one night before supper beginning their verses, Arthur suddenly
stopped, and looked up, and said, “Tom, do you know anything of Martin?”
“Yes,” said Tom, taking his hand out of his back hair, and delighted to
throw his Gradus ad Parnassum on to the sofa; “I know him pretty well.
He's a very good fellow, but as mad as a hatter. He's called Madman, you
know. And never was such a fellow for getting all sorts of rum things
about him. He tamed two snakes last half, and used to carry them about
in his pocket; and I'll be bound he's got some hedgehogs and rats in his
cupboard now, and no one knows what besides.”
“I should like very much to know him,” said Arthur; “he was next to me
in the form to-day, and he'd lost his book and looked over mine, and he
seemed so kind and gentle that I liked him very much.”
“Ah, poor old Madman, he's always losing his books,” said Tom, “and
getting called up and floored because he hasn't got them.”
“I like him all the better,” said Arthur.
“Well, he's great fun, I can tell you,” said Tom, throwing himself back
on the sofa, and chuckling at the remembrance. “We had such a game with
him one day last half. He had been kicking up horrid stinks for some
time in his study, till I suppose some fellow told Mary, and she told
the Doctor. Anyhow, one day a little before dinner, when he came down
from the library, the Doctor, instead of going home, came striding into
the hall. East and I and five or six other fellows were at the fire, and
preciously we stared, for he don't come in like that once a year, unless
it is a wet day and there's a fight in the hall. 'East,' says he, 'just
come and show me Martin's study.' 'Oh, here's a game,' whispered the
rest of us; and we all cut upstairs after the Doctor, East leading. As
we got into the New Row, which was hardly wide enough to hold the Doctor
and his gown, click, click, click, we heard in the old Madman's den.
Then that stopped all of a sudden, and the bolts went to like fun. The
Madman knew East's step, and thought there was going to be a siege.
“'It's the Doctor, Martin. He's here and wants to see you,' sings out
East.
“Then the bolts went back slowly, and the door opened, and there was
the old Madman standing, looking precious scared--his jacket off, his
shirt-sleeves up to his elbows, and his long skinny arms all covered
with anchors and arrows and letters, tattooed in with gunpowder like a
sailor-boy's, and a stink fit to knock you down coming out. 'Twas
all the Doctor could do to stand his ground, and East and I, who were
looking in under his arms, held our noses tight. The old magpie was
standing on the window-sill, all his feathers drooping, and looking
disgusted and half-poisoned.
“'What can you be about, Martin?' says the Doctor. 'You really mustn't
go on in this way; you're a nuisance to the whole passage.'
“'Please, sir, I was only mixing up this powder; there isn't any harm
in it. And the Madman seized nervously on his pestle and mortar, to
show the Doctor the harmlessness of his pursuits, and went on
pounding--click, click, click. He hadn't given six clicks before, puff!
up went the whole into a great blaze, away went the pestle and mortar
across the study, and back we tumbled into the passage. The magpie
fluttered down into the court, swearing, and the Madman danced out,
howling, with his fingers in his mouth. The Doctor caught hold of him,
and called to us to fetch some water. 'There, you silly fellow,' said
he, quite pleased, though, to find he wasn't much hurt, 'you see you
don't know the least what you're doing with all these things; and now,
mind, you must give up practising chemistry by yourself.' Then he took
hold of his arm and looked at it, and I saw he had to bite his lip, and
his eyes twinkled; but he said, quite grave, 'Here, you see, you've been
making all these foolish marks on yourself, which you can never get out,
and you'll be very sorry for it in a year or two. Now come down to the
housekeeper's room, and let us see if you are hurt.' And away went
the two, and we all stayed and had a regular turn-out of the den, till
Martin came back with his hand bandaged and turned us out. However, I'll
go and see what he's after, and tell him to come in after prayers to
supper.” And away went Tom to find the boy in question, who dwelt in a
little study by himself, in New Row.
The aforesaid Martin, whom Arthur had taken such a fancy for, was one of
those unfortunates who were at that time of day (and are, I fear, still)
quite out of their places at a public school. If we knew how to use
our boys, Martin would have been seized upon and educated as a natural
philosopher. He had a passion for birds, beasts, and insects, and knew
more of them and their habits than any one in Rugby--except perhaps the
Doctor, who knew everything. He was also an experimental chemist on a
small scale, and had made unto himself an electric machine, from which
it was his greatest pleasure and glory to administer small shocks to any
small boys who were rash enough to venture into his study. And this
was by no means an adventure free from excitement; for besides the
probability of a snake dropping on to your head or twining lovingly up
your leg, or a rat getting into your breeches-pocket in search of food,
there was the animal and chemical odour to be faced, which always hung
about the den, and the chance of being blown up in some of the many
experiments which Martin was always trying, with the most wondrous
results in the shape of explosions and smells that mortal boy ever heard
of. Of course, poor Martin, in consequence of his pursuits, had become
an Ishmaelite in the house. In the first place, he half-poisoned all his
neighbours, and they in turn were always on the lookout to pounce upon
any of his numerous live-stock, and drive him frantic by enticing his
pet old magpie out of his window into a neighbouring study, and making
the disreputable old bird drunk on toast soaked in beer and sugar. Then
Martin, for his sins, inhabited a study looking into a small court some
ten feet across, the window of which was completely commanded by those
of the studies opposite in the Sick-room Row, these latter being at
a slightly higher elevation. East, and another boy of an equally
tormenting and ingenious turn of mind, now lived exactly opposite, and
had expended huge pains and time in the preparation of instruments of
annoyance for the behoof of Martin and his live colony. One morning
an old basket made its appearance, suspended by a short cord outside
Martin's window, in which were deposited an amateur nest containing four
young hungry jackdaws, the pride and glory of Martin's life, for the
time being, and which he was currently asserted to have hatched upon
his own person. Early in the morning and late at night he was to be
seen half out of window, administering to the varied wants of his callow
brood. After deep cogitation, East and his chum had spliced a knife on
to the end of a fishing-rod; and having watched Martin out, had, after
half an hour's severe sawing, cut the string by which the basket
was suspended, and tumbled it on to the pavement below, with hideous
remonstrance from the occupants. Poor Martin, returning from his short
absence, collected the fragments and replaced his brood (except one
whose neck had been broken in the descent) in their old location,
suspending them this time by string and wire twisted together, defiant
of any sharp instrument which his persecutors could command. But, like
the Russian engineers at Sebastopol, East and his chum had an answer for
every move of the adversary, and the next day had mounted a gun in the
shape of a pea-shooter upon the ledge of their window, trained so as to
bear exactly upon the spot which Martin had to occupy while tending his
nurslings. The moment he began to feed they began to shoot. In vain did
the enemy himself invest in a pea-shooter, and endeavour to answer the
fire while he fed the young birds with his other hand; his attention was
divided, and his shots flew wild, while every one of theirs told on his
face and hands, and drove him into howlings and imprecations. He
had been driven to ensconce the nest in a corner of his already
too-well-filled den.
His door was barricaded by a set of ingenious bolts of his own
invention, for the sieges were frequent by the neighbours when any
unusually ambrosial odour spread itself from the den to the neighbouring
studies. The door panels were in a normal state of smash, but the frame
of the door resisted all besiegers, and behind it the owner carried on
his varied pursuits--much in the same state of mind, I should fancy,
as a border-farmer lived in, in the days of the moss-troopers, when his
hold might be summoned or his cattle carried off at any minute of night
or day.
“Open, Martin, old boy; it's only I, Tom Brown.”
“Oh, very well; stop a moment.” One bolt went back. “You're sure East
isn't there?”
“No, no; hang it, open.” Tom gave a kick, the other bolt creaked, and he
entered the den.
Den indeed it was--about five feet six inches long by five wide, and
seven feet high. About six tattered school-books, and a few chemical
books, Taxidermy, Stanley on Birds, and an odd volume of Bewick, the
latter in much better preservation, occupied the top shelves. The other
shelves, where they had not been cut away and used by the owner for
other purposes, were fitted up for the abiding-places of birds, beasts,
and reptiles. There was no attempt at carpet or curtain. The table was
entirely occupied by the great work of Martin, the electric machine,
which was covered carefully with the remains of his table-cloth. The
jackdaw cage occupied one wall; and the other was adorned by a small
hatchet, a pair of climbing irons, and his tin candle-box, in which he
was for the time being endeavouring to raise a hopeful young family of
field-mice. As nothing should be let to lie useless, it was well that
the candle-box was thus occupied, for candles Martin never had. A pound
was issued to him weekly, as to the other boys; but as candles were
available capital, and easily exchangeable for birds' eggs or young
birds, Martin's pound invariably found its way in a few hours to
Howlett's the bird-fancier's, in the Bilton road, who would give a
hawk's or nightingale's egg or young linnet in exchange. Martin's
ingenuity was therefore for ever on the rack to supply himself with
a light. Just now he had hit upon a grand invention, and the den was
lighted by a flaring cotton wick issuing from a ginger-beer bottle full
of some doleful composition. When light altogether failed him, Martin
would loaf about by the fires in the passages or hall, after the manner
of Diggs, and try to do his verses or learn his lines by the firelight.
“Well, old boy, you haven't got any sweeter in the den this half. How
that stuff in the bottle stinks! Never mind; I ain't going to stop; but
you come up after prayers to our study. You know young Arthur. We've got
Gray's study. We'll have a good supper and talk about bird-nesting.”
Martin was evidently highly pleased at the invitation, and promised to
be up without fail.
As soon as prayers were over, and the sixth and fifth form boys had
withdrawn to the aristocratic seclusion of their own room, and the rest,
or democracy, had sat down to their supper in the hall, Tom and Arthur,
having secured their allowances of bread and cheese, started on their
feet to catch the eye of the praepostor of the week, who remained in
charge during supper, walking up and down the hall. He happened to be an
easy-going fellow, so they got a pleasant nod to their “Please may I go
out?” and away they scrambled to prepare for Martin a sumptuous banquet.
This Tom had insisted on, for he was in great delight on the occasion,
the reason of which delight must be expounded. The fact was that this
was the first attempt at a friendship of his own which Arthur had made,
and Tom hailed it as a grand step. The ease with which he himself became
hail-fellow-well-met with anybody, and blundered into and out of twenty
friendships a half-year, made him sometimes sorry and sometimes angry at
Arthur's reserve and loneliness. True, Arthur was always pleasant, and
even jolly, with any boys who came with Tom to their study; but Tom felt
that it was only through him, as it were, that his chum associated
with others, and that but for him Arthur would have been dwelling in
a wilderness. This increased his consciousness of responsibility;
and though he hadn't reasoned it out and made it clear to himself yet
somehow he knew that this responsibility, this trust which he had taken
on him without thinking about it, head over heels in fact, was the
centre and turning-point of his school-life, that which was to make him
or mar him, his appointed work and trial for the time being. And Tom
was becoming a new boy, though with frequent tumbles in the dirt and
perpetual hard battle with himself, and was daily growing in manfulness
and thoughtfulness, as every high-couraged and well-principled boy must,
when he finds himself for the first time consciously at grips with self
and the devil. Already he could turn almost without a sigh from the
School-gates, from which had just scampered off East and three or four
others of his own particular set, bound for some jolly lark not quite
according to law, and involving probably a row with louts, keepers,
or farm-labourers, the skipping dinner or calling-over, some of Phoebe
Jennings's beer, and a very possible flogging at the end of all as a
relish. He had quite got over the stage in which he would grumble to
himself--“Well, hang it, it's very hard of the Doctor to have saddled me
with Arthur. Why couldn't he have chummed him with Fogey, or Thomkin, or
any of the fellows who never do anything but walk round the close, and
finish their copies the first day they're set?” But although all this
was past, he longed, and felt that he was right in longing, for more
time for the legitimate pastimes of cricket, fives, bathing, and
fishing, within bounds, in which Arthur could not yet be his companion;
and he felt that when the “young un” (as he now generally called him)
had found a pursuit and some other friend for himself, he should be
able to give more time to the education of his own body with a clear
conscience.
And now what he so wished for had come to pass; he almost hailed it as
a special providence (as indeed it was, but not for the reasons he
gave for it--what providences are?) that Arthur should have singled out
Martin of all fellows for a friend. “The old Madman is the very fellow,”
thought he; “he will take him scrambling over half the country after
birds' eggs and flowers, make him run and swim and climb like an Indian,
and not teach him a word of anything bad, or keep him from his lessons.
What luck!” And so, with more than his usual heartiness, he dived into
his cupboard, and hauled out an old knuckle-bone of ham, and two or
three bottles of beer, together with the solemn pewter only used on
state occasions; while Arthur, equally elated at the easy accomplishment
of his first act of volition in the joint establishment, produced from
his side a bottle of pickles and a pot of jam, and cleared the table. In
a minute or two the noise of the boys coming up from supper was heard,
and Martin knocked and was admitted, bearing his bread and cheese; and
the three fell to with hearty good-will upon the viands, talking faster
than they ate, for all shyness disappeared in a moment before Tom's
bottled-beer and hospitable ways. “Here's Arthur, a regular young
town-mouse, with a natural taste for the woods, Martin, longing to break
his neck climbing trees, and with a passion for young snakes.”
“Well, I say,” sputtered out Martin eagerly, “will you come to-morrow,
both of you, to Caldecott's Spinney then? for I know of a kestrel's
nest, up a fir-tree. I can't get at it without help; and, Brown, you can
climb against any one.”
“Oh yes, do let us go,” said Arthur; “I never saw a hawk's nest nor a
hawk's egg.”
“You just come down to my study, then, and I'll show you five sorts,”
said Martin.
“Ay, the old Madman has got the best collection in the house, out and
out,” said Tom; and then Martin, warming with unaccustomed good cheer
and the chance of a convert, launched out into a proposed bird-nesting
campaign, betraying all manner of important secrets--a golden-crested
wren's nest near Butlin's Mound, a moor-hen who was sitting on nine eggs
in a pond down the Barby road, and a kingfisher's nest in a corner of
the old canal above Brownsover Mill. He had heard, he said, that no
one had ever got a kingfisher's nest out perfect, and that the British
Museum, or the Government, or somebody, had offered 100 pounds to any
one who could bring them a nest and eggs not damaged. In the middle of
which astounding announcement, to which the others were listening with
open ears, and already considering the application of the 100 pounds, a
knock came to the door, and East's voice was heard craving admittance.
“There's Harry,” said Tom; “we'll let him in. I'll keep him steady,
Martin. I thought the old boy would smell out the supper.”
The fact was, that Tom's heart had already smitten him for not asking
his fidus Achates to the feast, although only an extempore affair; and
though prudence and the desire to get Martin and Arthur together alone
at first had overcome his scruples, he was now heartily glad to open the
door, broach another bottle of beer, and hand over the old ham-knuckle
to the searching of his old friend's pocket-knife.
“Ah, you greedy vagabonds,” said East, with his mouth full, “I knew
there was something going on when I saw you cut off out of hall so
quick with your suppers. What a stunning tap, Tom! You are a wunner for
bottling the swipes.”
“I've had practice enough for the sixth in my time, and it's hard if I
haven't picked up a wrinkle or two for my own benefit.”
“Well, old Madman, and how goes the bird-nesting campaign? How's
Howlett? I expect the young rooks'll be out in another fortnight, and
then my turn comes.”
“There'll be no young rooks fit for pies for a month yet; shows how much
you know about it,” rejoined Martin, who, though very good friends with
East, regarded him with considerable suspicion for his propensity to
practical jokes.
“Scud knows nothing and cares for nothing but grub and mischief,” said
Tom; “but young rook pie, specially when you've had to climb for them,
is very pretty eating.--However, I say, Scud, we're all going after a
hawk's nest to-morrow, in Caldecott's Spinney; and if you'll come and
behave yourself, we'll have a stunning climb.”
“And a bathe in Aganippe. Hooray! I'm your man.”
“No, no; no bathing in Aganippe; that's where our betters go.”
“Well, well, never mind. I'm for the hawk's nest, and anything that
turns up.”
And the bottled-beer being finished, and his hunger appeased, East
departed to his study, “that sneak Jones,” as he informed them, who had
just got into the sixth, and occupied the next study, having instituted
a nightly visitation upon East and his chum, to their no small
discomfort.
When he was gone Martin rose to follow, but Tom stopped him. “No one
goes near New Row,” said he, “so you may just as well stop here and do
your verses, and then we'll have some more talk. We'll be no end quiet.
Besides, no praepostor comes here now. We haven't been visited once this
half.”
So the table was cleared, the cloth restored, and the three fell to work
with Gradus and dictionary upon the morning's vulgus.
They were three very fair examples of the way in which such tasks were
done at Rugby, in the consulship of Plancus. And doubtless the method
is little changed, for there is nothing new under the sun, especially at
schools.
Now be it known unto all you boys who are at schools which do not
rejoice in the time-honoured institution of the vulgus (commonly
supposed to have been established by William of Wykeham at Winchester,
and imported to Rugby by Arnold more for the sake of the lines which
were learnt by heart with it than for its own intrinsic value, as I've
always understood), that it is a short exercise in Greek or Latin verse,
on a given subject, the minimum number of lines being fixed for each
form.
The master of the form gave out at fourth lesson on the previous day the
subject for next morning's vulgus, and at first lesson each boy had to
bring his vulgus ready to be looked over; and with the vulgus, a
certain number of lines from one of the Latin or Greek poets then being
construed in the form had to be got by heart. The master at first lesson
called up each boy in the form in order, and put him on in the lines.
If he couldn't say them, or seem to say them, by reading them off the
master's or some other boy's book who stood near, he was sent back,
and went below all the boys who did so say or seem to say them; but
in either case his vulgus was looked over by the master, who gave and
entered in his book, to the credit or discredit of the boy, so many
marks as the composition merited. At Rugby vulgus and lines were the
first lesson every other day in the week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and
Saturdays; and as there were thirty-eight weeks in the school year, it
is obvious to the meanest capacity that the master of each form had
to set one hundred and fourteen subjects every year, two hundred and
twenty-eight every two years, and so on. Now, to persons of moderate
invention this was a considerable task, and human nature being prone to
repeat itself, it will not be wondered that the masters gave the same
subjects sometimes over again after a certain lapse of time. To meet
and rebuke this bad habit of the masters, the schoolboy mind, with its
accustomed ingenuity, had invented an elaborate system of tradition.
Almost every boy kept his own vulgus written out in a book, and these
books were duly handed down from boy to boy, till (if the tradition has
gone on till now) I suppose the popular boys, in whose hands bequeathed
vulgus-books have accumulated, are prepared with three or four vulguses
on any subject in heaven or earth, or in “more worlds than one,” which
an unfortunate master can pitch upon. At any rate, such lucky fellows
had generally one for themselves and one for a friend in my time. The
only objection to the traditionary method of doing your vulguses was the
risk that the successions might have become confused, and so that you
and another follower of traditions should show up the same identical
vulgus some fine morning; in which case, when it happened, considerable
grief was the result. But when did such risk hinder boys or men from
short cuts and pleasant paths?
Now in the study that night Tom was the upholder of the traditionary
method of vulgus doing. He carefully produced two large vulgus-books,
and began diving into them, and picking out a line here, and an ending
there (tags, as they were vulgarly called), till he had gotten all
that he thought he could make fit. He then proceeded to patch his tags
together with the help of his Gradus, producing an incongruous and
feeble result of eight elegiac lines, the minimum quantity for his form,
and finishing up with two highly moral lines extra, making ten in
all, which he cribbed entire from one of his books, beginning “O genus
humanum,” and which he himself must have used a dozen times before,
whenever an unfortunate or wicked hero, of whatever nation or language
under the sun, was the subject. Indeed he began to have great doubts
whether the master wouldn't remember them, and so only throw them in as
extra lines, because in any case they would call off attention from the
other tags, and if detected, being extra lines, he wouldn't be sent back
to do more in their place, while if they passed muster again he would
get marks for them.
The second method, pursued by Martin, may be called the dogged or
prosaic method. He, no more than Tom, took any pleasure in the task,
but having no old vulgus-books of his own, or any one's else, could
not follow the traditionary method, for which too, as Tom remarked, he
hadn't the genius. Martin then proceeded to write down eight lines in
English, of the most matter-of-fact kind, the first that came into his
head; and to convert these, line by line, by main force of Gradus and
dictionary into Latin that would scan. This was all he cared for--to
produce eight lines with no false quantities or concords: whether the
words were apt, or what the sense was, mattered nothing; and as the
article was all new, not a line beyond the minimum did the followers of
the dogged method ever produce.
The third, or artistic method, was Arthur's. He considered first what
point in the character or event which was the subject could most neatly
be brought out within the limits of a vulgus, trying always to get his
idea into the eight lines, but not binding himself to ten or even twelve
lines if he couldn't do this. He then set to work as much as possible
without Gradus or other help, to clothe his idea in appropriate Latin or
Greek, and would not be satisfied till he had polished it well up with
the aptest and most poetic words and phrases he could get at.
A fourth method, indeed, was used in the school, but of too simple
a kind to require a comment. It may be called the vicarious method,
obtained amongst big boys of lazy or bullying habits, and consisted
simply in making clever boys whom they could thrash do their whole
vulgus for them, and construe it to them afterwards; which latter is a
method not to be encouraged, and which I strongly advise you all not
to practise. Of the others, you will find the traditionary most
troublesome, unless you can steal your vulguses whole (experto crede),
and that the artistic method pays the best both in marks and other ways.
The vulguses being finished by nine o'clock, and Martin having rejoiced
above measure in the abundance of light, and of Gradus and dictionary,
and other conveniences almost unknown to him for getting through the
work, and having been pressed by Arthur to come and do his verses there
whenever he liked, the three boys went down to Martin's den, and Arthur
was initiated into the lore of birds' eggs, to his great delight.
The exquisite colouring and forms astonished and charmed him, who had
scarcely ever seen any but a hen's egg or an ostrich's, and by the time
he was lugged away to bed he had learned the names of at least twenty
sorts, and dreamed of the glorious perils of tree-climbing, and that he
had found a roc's egg in the island as big as Sinbad's, and clouded like
a tit-lark's, in blowing which Martin and he had nearly been drowned in
the yolk.