PRAY REMEMBER THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER--RUMOURS OF WARS--PRECEDED BY
SCHOLASTIC ELOCUTION, AND SUCCEEDED BY A COLD DINNER, DARKNESS, AND
DETERMINATION.
I shall now draw the dolorous recital of what I have termed my epoch of
despondency to a close. The fifth of November was approaching; I had
been at school nearly two years, and had learned little but the hard
lesson "to bear," and that I had well studied. I had, as yet, made no
friends. Boys are very tyrannical and very generous by fits. They will
bully and oppress the outcast of a school, because it is the fashion to
bully and oppress him--but they will equally magnify their hero, and are
sensitively alive to admiration of feats of daring and wild exploit.
With them, bravery is the first virtue, generosity the second. They
crouch under the strong for protection, and they court the lavish from
self-interest. In all this they differ from men in nothing but that
they act more undisguisedly. Well, the fifth of November was fast
approaching, on which I was to commence the enthusiastic epoch of my
schoolboy existence. I was now twelve years of age. Almost insensible
to bodily pain by frequent magisterial and social thrashings, tall,
strong of my age, reckless, and fearless. The scene of my first exploit
was to be amidst the excitement of a "barring out," but of such a
"barring out" that the memory of it remains in the vicinity in which it
took place to this day.
I have before said that the school contained never less than two hundred
and fifty pupils--sometimes it amounted to nearly three hundred. At the
time of which I am about to speak, it was very full, containing, among
others, many young men. The times are no more when persons of nineteen
and twenty suffered themselves to be horsed, and took their one and two
dozen with edification and humility. At this age we now cultivate
moustaches, talk of our Joe Mantons, send a friend to demand an
explanation, and all that sort of thing. Oh! times are much improved!
However, at that period, the birch was no visionary terror. Infliction
or expulsion was the alternative! and as the form of government was a
despotism--like all despotisms--it was subject, at intervals, to great
convulsions. I am going to describe the greatest under the reign of
Root the First.
Mr Root was capricious. Sometimes he wore his own handsome head well
powdered; at others, curled without powder; at others, straight, without
powder or curls. He was churchwarden; and then, when his head was full
of his office, it was also full of flour, and full of ideas of his own
consequence and infallibility. On a concert night, and in the
ball-room, it was curled, and then it was full of amatory conquests;
and, as he was captain in the Cavalry Volunteers, on field days his hair
was straight and lank--martial ardour gave him no time to attend to the
fripperies of the coxcomb. These are but small particulars, but such
are very important in the character of a great man. With his hair
curled, he was jocular, even playful; with it lank, he was a great
disciplinarian--had military subordination strong in respect--and the
birch gyrated freely; but when he was full blown in powder, he was
unbearable,--there was then combined all the severity of the soldier and
the dogmatism of the pedagogue, with the self-sufficiency and
domineering nature of the coxcomb and churchwarden.
On the memorable fifth of November, Mr Root appeared in the
school-room, with his hair elaborately powdered.
The little boys trembled. Lads by fifteens and twenties wanted to go
out under various pretences. The big boys looked very serious and very
resolved. It was twelve o'clock, and some thirty or forty--myself
always included--were duly flogged, it being "his custom at the hour of
noon." When the periodical operation was over, at which there was much
spargefication of powder from his whitened head, he commanded silence.
Even the flagellated boys contrived to hush up their sobs, the shuffling
of feet ceased, those who had colds refrained from blowing their noses;
and, after one boy was flogged for coughing, he thus delivered
himself:--
"Young gentlemen, it has been customary--customary it has been, I say--
for you to have permission to make a bonfire in the lower field, and
display your fireworks, on this anniversary of the fifth of November.
Little boys, take your dictionaries, and look out for the word
`anniversary.'"
A bustle for the books, while Mr Root plumes himself, and struts up and
down. Two boys fight for the same dictionary; one of them gets a plunge
on the nose, which makes him cry out--he is immediately horsed, and
flogged for speaking; and, rod in hand, Mr Root continues:--
"Young gentlemen, you know my method--my method is well known to you, I
say,--to join amusement with instruction. Now, young gentlemen, the
great conflagration--tenth, ninth, and eighth forms, look out the word
`conflagration'--the great conflagration, I say, made by this
pyrotechnic display--seventh, sixth, and fifth forms, turn up the word
`pyrotechnic.' Mr Reynolds (the head classical master,) you will
particularly oblige me by not taking snuff in that violent way whilst I
am speaking, the sniffling is abominable."
"Turn up the word `sniffling,'" cries a voice from the lower end of the
school. A great confusion--the culprit remains undiscovered, and some
forty, at two suspected desks, are fined three-halfpence apiece. Mr
Root continues, with a good deal of indignation:--"I sha'n't allow the
bonfire no more--no, not at all; nor the fireworks neither--no, nothing
of no kind of the sort." All this in his natural voice: then, swelling
in dignity and in diction, "but, for the accumulated pile of
combustibles, I say--for the combustible pile that you have accumulated,
that you may not be deprived of the merit of doing a good action, the
materials of which it is composed, that is to say, the logs of wood, and
the bavins of furze, with the pole and tar-barrel, shall be sold, and
the money put in the poor-box next Sunday, which I, as one of the
churchwardens shall hold at the church-porch; for a charity sermon will,
on that day, be preached by the Reverend Father in God, the Lord Bishop
of Bristol. It is our duty, as Christians, to give eleemosynary aid to
the poor;--let all classes but the first and second look out the word
`eleemosynary.' I say, to the poor eleemosynary aid should be given.
You will also give up all the fire-works that you may have in your
play-boxes, for the same laudable purpose. The servant will go round
and collect them after dinner. I say, by the servant after dinner they
shall all be collected. Moreover, young gentlemen, I have to tell you,
that the churchwardens, and the authorities in the town, are determined
to put down Guy Faux, and he shall be put down accordingly. So now,
young gentlemen, you'd better take your amusements before dinner, for
you will have no holiday in the afternoon, and I shall not suffer anyone
to go out after tea, for fear of mischief." Having thus spoken, he
dismissed the school, and strode forth majestically.
Oh, reader! can you conceive the dismay, the indignation, and the rage
that the Court of Aldermen would display, if, when sitting down hungrily
to a civic feast, they were informed that all the eatables and
potatories were carried off by a party headed by Mr Scales? Can you
conceive the fury that would burn in the countenances of a whole family
of lordly sinecurists, at being informed, upon official authority, that
henceforth their salaries would be equal to their services? No, all
this you cannot conceive; nor turtle-desiring aldermen, nor cate-fed
sinecurists, could, under these their supposed tribulations, have
approached, in fury and hate, the meekest-spirited boys of Mr Root's
school, when they became fully aware of the extent of the tyrannous
robbery about to be perpetrated. Had they not been led on by hope? Had
they not trustingly eschewed Banbury-cakes--sidled by longingly the
pastrycook's--and piously withstood the temptation of hard-bake, in
order that they might save up their pocket-money for this one grand
occasion? and even after this, their hopes and their exertions to end in
smoke? Would that it were even that; but it was decided that there
should be neither fire nor smoke. Infatuated pedagogue! Unhappy
decision!
The boys did not make use of the permission to go out to play. They
gathered together unanimously, in earnest knots--rebellion stalked on
tip-toe from party to party: the little boys looked big, and the big
boys looked bigger, and the young men looked magnificent. The
half-boarders whispered their fears to the ushers, the ushers spoke
under their breaths to the under-masters, the under-masters had cautious
conversation with the head Latin, French, and mathematical tutors, and
these poured their misgivings into the ears of the awful _Dominus_
himself; but he only shook his powdered head in derision and disdain.
On that cold, foggy fifth of November, we all sat down to a dinner as
cold as the day, and with looks as dark as the atmosphere. Amidst the
clatter of knives and forks, the rumour already ran from table to table
that a horse and cart was just going to remove the enormous pile of
combustibles collected for the bonfire. We had good spirits amongst us.
There was an air of calm defiance on a great many. The reason was soon
explained, for, before we rose from our repast, huge volumes of red
flame rose from the field,--the pile had been fired in twenty places at
once, and, at this sight, a simultaneous and irrepressible shout shook
the walls of the school-room. The maid-servants who were attending the
table, shrieking, each in her peculiar musical note, hurried out in
confusion and fear; and there was a rush towards the door by the
scholars, and some few got downstairs. However, the masters soon closed
the door, and those who had escaped were brought back. The shutters of
the windows that looked out upon the fire, were closed; and thus, in the
middle of the day, we were reduced to a state almost of twilight.
Every moment expecting actual collision with their pupils, the masters
and ushers, about sixteen in number, congregated at the lower end of the
room near the door, for the double purpose of supporting each other, and
of making a timely escape. The half-suppressed hubbub among three
hundred boys, confined in partial darkness, grew stronger each moment;
it was like the rumbling beneath the earth, that precedes the
earthquake. No one spoke as yet louder than the other--the master-voice
had not yet risen. That dulled noise seemed like a far-off humming, and
had it not been so intense, and so very human, it might have been
compared to the wrath of a myriad of bees confined in the darkness of
their hives, with the queen lying dead amongst them.