In a house, formerly a suburban seat of the unfortunate Earl_The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 01 (of 11) Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original Illustrations

Essex--over a grocer’s shop--up two pair of stairs, there was a very

select day-school, kept by a decayed Dominie, as he would have been

called in his native land. In his better days, when my brother was his

pupil, he had been master of one of those wholesale concerns in which

so many ignorant men have made fortunes, by favour of high terms, low

ushers, gullible parents, and victimised little boys. As our worthy

Dominie, on the contrary, had failed to realise even a competence,

it may be inferred, logically, that he had done better by his pupils

than by himself; and my own experience certainly went to prove that

he attended to the interests of his scholars, however he might have

neglected his own. Indeed, he less resembled, even in externals, the

modern worldly trading Schoolmaster, than the good, honest, earnest,

olden Pedagogue--a pedant, perchance, but a learned one, with whom

teaching was “a labour of love,” who had a proper sense of the dignity

and importance of his calling, and was content to find a main portion

of his reward in the honourable proficiency of his disciples. Small as

was our College, its Principal maintained his state, and walked gowned

and covered. His cap was of faded velvet, of black, or blue, or purple,

or sad green, or as it seemed, of all together, with a _nuance_ of

brown. His robe, of crimson damask, lined with the national tartan. A

quaint, carved, highbacked, elbowed article, looking like an _émigré_,

from a set that had been at home in an aristocratical drawing-room,

under the _ancien régime_, was his Professional Chair, which with his

desk was appropriately elevated on a dais, some inches above the common

floor. From this moral and material eminence, he cast a vigilant yet

kindly eye over some dozen of youngsters; for adversity, sharpened by

habits of authority, had not soured him, or mingled a single tinge

of bile with the peculiar red-streak complexion, so common to the

healthier natives of the North. On one solitary occasion, within my

memory, was he seriously yet characteristically discomposed, and that

was by his own daughter, whom he accused of “forgetting all regard for

common decorum;” because, forgetting that he was a Dominie as well

as a Parent, she had heedlessly addressed him in public as “Father,”

instead of “Papa.” The mere provoking contrariety of a dunce never

stirred his spleen, but rather spurred his endeavour, in spite of the

axiom, to make Nihil fit for anything. He loved teaching for teaching’s

sake; his kill-horse happened to be his hobby: and doubtless, if he had

met with a penniless boy on the road to learning, he would have given

him a lift, like the charitable Waggoner to Dick Whittington--for love.

I recall, therefore, with pleasure, the cheerful alacrity with which I

used to step up to recite my lesson, constantly forewarned--for every

true schoolmaster has his stock joke--not to “stand in my own light.”

It was impossible not to take an interest in learning what he seemed

so interested in teaching; and in a few months my education progressed

infinitely farther than it had done in as many years under the listless

superintendence of B. A., and L. L. D. and Assistants. I picked up

_some_ Latin, was a tolerable English Grammarian, and so good a French

scholar, that I earned a few guineas--my first literary fee--by

revising a new edition of “Paul et Virginie” for the press. Moreover,

as an accountant, I could work a _summum bonum_--i.e. a good sum.

In the mean time,--so generally unfortunate is the courtship of that

bashful undertoned wooer, Modest Merit, to that loud, brazen masculine,

worldly heiress, Success--the school did not prosper. The number

of scholars diminished rather that increased. At least no new boys

came--but one fine morning, about nine o’clock, a great “she gal,”

of fifteen or sixteen, but so remarkably well grown that she might

have been “any of our mothers,” made her unexpected appearance with

bag and books. The sensation that she excited is not to be described!

The apparition of a Governess, with a Proclamation of a Gynecocracy

could not have been more astounding! Of course SHE instantly formed a

class; and had any form SHE might prefer to herself:--the most of us

being just old enough to resent what was considered as an affront on

the corduroy sex, and just young enough to be beneath any gallantry

to the silken one. The truth was, sub rosa, that there was a plan

for translating us, and turning the unsuccessful Boys’ School into a

Ladies’ Academy; to be conducted by the Dominie’s eldest daughter--but

it had been thought prudent to be well on with the new set before being

off with the old. A brief period only had elapsed, when, lo! a leash of

female school _Fellows_--three sisters, like the Degrees of Comparison

personified, Big, Bigger, and Biggest--made their unwelcome appearance,

and threatened to push us from our stools. They were greeted,

accordingly, with all the annoyances that juvenile malice could

suggest. It is amusing, yet humiliating, to remember the nuisances

the sex endured at the hands of those who were thereafter to honour

the shadow of its shoe-tie--to groan, moan, sigh, and sicken for its

smiles--to become poetical, prosaical, nonsensical, lack-a-daisical,

and perhaps even melodramatical for its sake. Numberless were the

desk-quakes, the ink-spouts, the book-bolts, the pea-showers, and

other unregistered phenomena, which likened the studies of those four

unlucky maidens to the “Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties,”--so

that it glads me to reflect, that I was in a very small minority

against the persecution; having already begun to read poetry, and

even to write something which was egregiously mistaken for something

of the same nature. The final result of the struggle in the academic

nest--whether the hen-cuckoos succeeded in ousting the cock-sparrows,

or vice versa--is beyond my record; seeing that I was just then removed

from the scene of contest, to be introduced into that Universal School

where, as in the preparatory ones, we have very unequal shares in the

flogging, the fagging, the task-work, and the pocket-money; but the

same breaking-up to expect, and the same eternity of happy holidays to

hope for in the Grand Recess.

In brief, a friend of the family having taken a fancy to me, proposed

to initiate me in those profitable mercantile mysteries which enabled

Sir Thomas Gresham to gild his grasshopper; and like another Frank

Osbaldestone, I found myself planted on a counting-house stool, which

nevertheless served occasionally for a Pegasus, on three legs, every

foot, of course, being a dactyl or a spondee. In commercial matters,

the only lesson imprinted on my memory is the rule that when a ship’s

crew from Archangel, come to receive their L. S. D., you must lock up

your P. Y. C.

[Illustration: THE WINNER OF THE LEDGER.]

[4] In spite of hundreds of associates, it has never happened to

me, amongst the very many distinguished names connected with

science or literature, to recognise _one_ as belonging to a

school-fellow.

[Illustration: SHOOTING WITH ROVER AND RANGER.]

SHOOTING PAINS.

“The charge is prepared.”--MACHEATH.

If I shoot any more I’ll be shot,

For ill-luck seems determined to star me,

I have march’d the whole day

With a gun--for no pay--

Zounds, I’d better have been in the army!

What matters Sir Christopher’s leave?

To his manor I’m sorry I came yet!

With confidence fraught,

My two pointers I brought,

But we are not a point towards game yet!

And that gamekeeper too, with advice!

Of my course he has been a nice chalker,

Not far, were his words,

I could go without birds:

If my legs could cry out, they’d cry “Walker!”

Not Hawker could find out a flaw,--

My appointments are modern and Mantony,

And I’ve brought my own man,

To mark down all he can,

But I can’t find a mark for my Antony!

The partridges,--where can they lie?

I have promised a leash to Miss Jervas,

As the least I could do;

But without even two

To brace me,--I’m getting quite nervous!

To the pheasants--how well they’re preserved!

My sport’s not a jot more beholden,

As the birds are so shy,

For my friends I must buy,

And so send “silver pheasants and golden.”

I have tried ev’ry form for a hare,

Every patch, every furze that could shroud her,

With toil unrelax’d,

Till my patience is tax’d,

But I cannot be taxed for hare-powder.

I’ve been roaming for hours in three flats

In the hope of a snipe for a snap at;

But still vainly I court

The percussioning sport,

I find nothing for “setting my cap at!”

A woodcock,--this month is the time,--

Right and left I’ve made ready my lock for,

With well-loaded double,

But spite of my trouble,

Neither barrel can I find a cock for!

A rabbit I should not despise,

But they lurk in their burrows so lowly;

This day’s the eleventh,

It is not the seventh,

But they seem to be keeping it hole-y.

[Illustration: CANVASSING A BURROW--“COME TO THE POLE.”]

For a mallard I’ve waded the marsh,

And haunted each pool, and each lake--oh!

Mine is not the luck,

To obtain thee, O Duck,

Or to doom thee, O Drake, like a Draco!

For a field-fare I’ve fared far a-field,

Large or small I am never to sack bird,

Not a thrush is so kind

As to fly, and I find

I may whistle myself for a black-bird!

I am angry, I’m hungry, I’m dry,

Disappointed, and sullen, and goaded,

And so weary an elf,

I am sick of myself,

And with Number one seem overloaded.

As well one might beat round St. Paul’s,

And look out for a cock or a hen there;

I have search’d round and round

All the Baronet’s ground,

But Sir Christopher hasn’t a wren there!

[Illustration: A DOUBLE BARREL.]

Joyce may talk of his excellent caps,

But for nightcaps they set me desiring,

And it’s really too bad,

Not a shot I have had

With Hall’s Powder, renown’d for “quick firing.”

If this is what people call sport,

Oh! of sporting I can’t have a high sense.

And there still remains one

More mischance on my gun--

“Fined for shooting without any license.”

[Illustration: PALMAM QUI MERUIT FERAT.]

THE SCHOOLMASTER’S MOTTO.

“The Admiral compelled them all to strike.”--LIFE OF NELSON.

Hush! silence in School--not a noise!

You shall soon see there’s nothing to jeer at,

Master Marsh, most audacious of boys!

Come!--“Palmam qui meruit ferat!”

So this morn in the midst of the Psalm,

The Miss Siffkins’s school you must leer at,

You’re complained of--Sir! hold out your palm,--