I PROVE TO BE, NOT ONE IN A THOUSAND, BUT ONE IN A QUARTER OF THAT
NUMBER, TO WHOM NO QUARTER WAS SHOWN--IN SPITE OF MY ENTREATIES I AM
EVIL ENTREATED, AND AM NOT ONLY PLACED ON THE LOWEST FORM, BUT MADE
EXCESSIVELY UNCOMFORTABLE ON MY SEAT OF HONOUR.
Heroes, statesmen, philosophers, must bend to circumstances, and so must
little boys at boarding-school. I went to bed with the rest, and, like
the rest, had my bed-fellow. Miserable and weary was that night to my
infant heart. When I found I could do so unobserved, I buried my face
in the pillow, and wept with a perfect passion of wretchedness.
I had a hard, a cruel life at that school. When I lived with my nurse,
the boys in the street used to beat me because I was too much of the
gentleman, and now the young gentlemen thrashed me for not coming up to
their standard of gentility. I saw a tyrant in every urchin that was
stronger than myself, and a derider in him that was weaker. The next
morning after my arrival, a fellow a little bigger than myself, came up,
and standing before me, gave me very deliberately as hard a slap in the
face as his strength would permit. Half crying with the pain, and yet
not wishing to be thought quarrelsome, I asked, with good-natured
humility, whether that was done in jest or in earnest. The little
insolent replied, in his school-boy wit, "Betwixt and between." I
couldn't stand that; my passion and my fist rose together, and hitting
my oppressor midway between the eyes, "There's my betwixt and between,"
said I. His nose began to bleed, and when I went down into the
school-room, the "new boy" had his hands well warmed with the ruler for
fighting.
Alas! the first year of my academic life was one of unqualified
wretchedness. For the two or three initiatory months, uncouth in
speech, and vulgar in mien, with no gilded toy, rich plum-cake, or
mint-new shilling to conciliate, I was despised and ridiculed; and when
it was ascertained by my own confession that I was the son of a
day-labourer, I was shunned by the aristocratic progeny of butchers,
linen-drapers, and hatters. It took, at least, a half-dozen floggings
to cure me of the belief that Joseph Brandon and his wife were my
parents. It was the shortest road to conviction, and Mr Root prided
himself upon short _cuts_ in imparting knowledge. I assure my readers
they were severe ones.
Mr Root, the pedagogue of this immense school, which was situated in
the vicinity of Islington, was a very stout and very handsome man, of
about thirty. He had formerly been a subordinate where he now
commanded, and his good looks had gained him the hand of the widow of
his predecessor. He was very florid, with a cold dark eye; but his face
was the most physical that I ever beheld. From the white, low forehead,
to the well-formed chin, there was nothing on which the gazer could rest
that spoke of intellectuality. There was "speculation in his eye," but
it was the calculation of farthings. There was a pure ruddiness in his
cheek, but it was the glow of matter, not that of mind. His mouth was
well formed, yet pursed up with an expression of mingled vanity and
severity. He was very robust, and his arm exceedingly powerful. With
all these personal advantages, he had a shrill, girlish voice, that made
him, in the execution of his cruelties, actually hideous. I believe,
and I make the assertion in all honesty, that he received a sensual
enjoyment by the act of inflicting punishment. He attended to no
department of the school but the flagellative. He walked in about
twelve o'clock, had all on the list placed on a form, his man-servant
was called in, the lads horsed, and he, in general, found ample
amusement till one. He used to make it his boast that he never allowed
any of his ushers to punish. The hypocrite! the epicure! he reserved
all that luxury for himself. Add to this, that he was very ignorant out
of the Tutor's Assistant, and that he wrote a most abominably good hand
(that usual sign of a poor and trifle-occupied mind), and now you have a
very fair picture of Mr Root. I have said that he was a most cruel
tyrant: yet Nero himself ought not to be blackened; and I must say this
for my master's humanity, that I had been at school two days before I
was flogged; and then it was for the enormity of not knowing my own
name. "Rattlin," said the pedagogue. No reply. "Master Rattlin," in a
shriller tone. Answer there was none. "Master Ralph Rattlin." Many
started, but "Ralph Brandon" thought it concerned not him. But it did
indeed. I believe that I had been told my new name, but I had forgotten
it in my grief, and now in grief and in pain I was again taught it.
When, for the first time, in reality, I tasted that acid and bitter
fruit of the tree of knowledge, old Isaac's (my soldier schoolmaster)
mock brushings were remembered with heartfelt regret.
At that time the road to learning was strewed neither with flowers nor
palm-leaves, but with the instigating birch. The schoolmaster had not
yet gone abroad, but he flogged most diligently at home, and, verily, I
partook amply of that diligence. I was flogged full, and I was flogged
fasting; when I deserved it, and when I did not; I was flogged for
speaking too loudly, and for not speaking loud enough, and for holding
my tongue. Moreover, one morning I rode the horse without the saddle,
because my face was dirty, and the next, because I pestered the
maid-servant to wash it clean. I was flogged because my shoes were
dirty, and again because I attempted to wipe them clean with my
pocket-handkerchief. I was flogged for playing, and for staying in the
school-room and not going out to play. The bigger boys used to beat me,
and I was then flogged for fighting. It is hard to say for what I was
not flogged. Things, the most contradictory, all tended to one end, and
that was my own. At length, he flogged me into serious ill-health, and
then he stayed his hand, and I found relief on a bed of sickness. Even
now I look back to those days of persecution with horror. Those were
the times of large schools, rods steeped in brine (_actual fact_),
intestine insurrections, the bumping of obnoxious ushers, and the
"barring out" of tyrannical masters. A school of this description was a
complete place of torment for the orphan, the unfriended, and the
deserted. Lads then stayed at school till they were eighteen and even
twenty, and fagging flourished in all its atrocious oppression.