Another incident of these boyish years of a very different complexion
has made a far deeper impression on my memory. It must have been, to the
best of my remembrance, about the same time, probably some six months
later in the same year, that it was decided that I was to accompany my
father and mother in a “long vacation” ramble which had long been
projected. My father’s method of travel on this excursion, which was to
include parts of Sussex, Hampshire, Wilts, Devon, Somerset, and
Monmouth, was to drive my mother and myself in his gig, accompanied by a
servant riding another horse, who was provided with a pair of traces to
hook on as tandem whenever the nature of the road required such
assistance. I think that this tour afforded me some of the happiest days
and hours I have ever known. I can never forget the ecstasy of delight
with which I looked forward to it, and the preparations I
made--suggested probably, some of them, by the experiences of Robinson
Crusoe. The distance and differentiation between me and other boys of my
acquaintance which was caused by my destination to this great adventure
I felt to be such as that which may be supposed to exist between
Livingstone and the stay-at-home mortals who read his books.
We started after breakfast one fine morning, “George,” the footman,
turned into groom and courier, riding after the gig. I considered this a
disappointingly tame proceeding. I had been up myself considerably
before daylight, and considered that, looking to the arduous nature of
the journey before us (we were to sleep at Dorking that night), we ought
at least to have been on the road while the less adventurous part of the
world were still asleep.
We had not proceeded many miles before an _amari aliquid_ disclosed
itself of a very distressing kind. I was seated on a little box placed
on the floor of the gig between the knees of my father and mother, and
was “as happy as a prince,” or probably much happier than any
contemporaneous prince then in Christendom, when my father produced from
out of the driving seat beneath him a Delphin _Virgil_, and intimated to
me that our journey must by no means entail an entire interruption of my
education; that our travelling was not at all incompatible with a little
study; and that he was ready to hear me construe. It may be readily
imagined how much such “study” was likely to profit me. Every incident
of the road, every waggon, every stage coach we met, every village
church seen across the fields, every milestone even, was a matter of
intense interest to me. Had I been Argus-eyed every eye would have been
busy. I remember that my mother remonstrated, but in vain. And an hour
or two of otherwise intense delight was turned into something which it
is scarcely an exaggeration to call torture. I think, however, that my
mother must have subsequently renewed her pleadings, for on the second
day’s journey the _Virgil_ was not brought out. It was reserved for the
days when we were stationary, but no longer poisoned our absolute
travel.
If I never became a distinguished scholar it was assuredly from no want
of urgency in season and out of season on the part of my poor father.
But not even _Virgil_ himself, backed by an _Eton Latin Grammar_ and a
small travelling dictionary, could altogether destroy the manifold
delights of that journey. I must not inflict on my reader all or a tithe
of my topographical reminiscences: but I will relate one little
adventure which went near to saving him not only from this volume but
from all that half a century, and more, of subsequent pen-work may have
inflicted on him. It was at Gloucester. My parents and I had gone to the
cathedral about a quarter of an hour before the time for service on a
Sunday morning. The great bell was being rung--an operation which was at
that time performed by seven bell-ringers down in the body of the
church. One large rope, descending from an aperture in the vault, was,
at some dozen or so of feet from the pavement, divided into seven--one
for each of the bell-ringers. Now it so happened that on that day one of
the men was absent from his post, and one rope hung loose and
unoccupied. No sooner had I espied this state of things than I rushed
forward and seized the vacant rope, intending to add my efforts to those
of the six men at work. But it so happened that at the moment when I
thus clutched the rope the men had raised the bell, and of course at the
end of their pull allowed the ropes to fly upwards through their hands.
But I, knowing nothing of bell-ringing, clung tightly to my rope, and
was of course swung up from the pavement with terrific speed.
Fortunately the height of the vault was so great as to allow the full
swing of the bell to complete itself without bringing me into contact
with the roof. The men cried out to me to hold on tight. I did so, and
descended safely--so unharmed that I was very desirous of repeating the
experiment, which, as may be supposed, was not allowed. I can pull a
bell more knowingly now.
The charming old church at Gloucester was not kept and cared for in
those days as it is now--a remark which is applicable, as recent visits
have shown me, to nearly all the cathedral churches in England. I may
observe also, since one object of these pages is to mark the social
changes in English life since my young days, that the improvement in the
tone and manner of performing the choral service in our cathedrals is as
striking as the increased care for the fabrics. It used for the most
part to be a careless, perfunctory, and not very reverent or decorous
performance when George the Third was king. Those were the days when one
minor canon could be backed to give another to “Pontius Pilate” in the
Creed, and beat him! Other times, other manners!
I think that the points in that still well-remembered tour, that most of
all delighted me, were, first of all, Lynton and Lynmouth, on the north
coast of Devon; then the banks of the Wye from Chepstow to Ross; and
thirdly, Raglan Castle. I had already read the _Mysteries of Udolpho_,
with more enjoyment probably than any other reading has ever afforded
me. It was an ecstasy of delight, tempered only by the impossibility of
gratifying my intense longing to start forthwith to see the places and
countries described. And when I did in long after years see them! Oh,
Mrs. Ratcliffe, how could you tell such tales! What! this the lovely
Provence of my dreams? But I was fresh from _The Mysteries_, and full of
faith when I went to Raglan, and strove to apply, at least as a matter
of possibility, the incidents of the romance to the localities of the
delightful ruin.
Nor was Raglan in those days cared for with the loving care now bestowed
on it by the Duke of Somerset. I have heard people complain of the
restrictions, and of the small entrance fee now demanded for admittance
to the ruins, and regret the days when the traveller could, as in my
time, wander over every part of it at will. All that was very charming,
but the place was not as beautiful as it is now. The necessary expense
for the due conservation of the ruins must be very considerable. And
when one hears, as I did recently at Raglan, that steam and
bank-holidays have brought as many as fifteen hundred (!) visitors to
the spot in one day, it may be easily imagined what the condition of the
place would shortly become if careful restrictions were not enforced. Of
lovely--ever lovely--Tintern, the same remarks may be made. Certainly
there was a charm in wandering there, as I did when a boy, almost
justified by the solitude in feeling myself to be the discoverer of the
spot. Now there is a fine hotel, with waiters in black-tailed coats, and
dinners _à la carte_! And huge vans pouring in “tourists” by the
thousand. Between four and five thousand persons, I was told, visited
Tintern in one August day! Scott tells those who would “view fair
Melrose aright” to “visit it by the pale moonlight.” But I fear me that
no such precaution could secure solitude, though it might beauty, at
Tintern in August. But the care bestowed upon it makes the place more
beautiful than ever. The guardians by dint of locked gates prevent the
lovely sward from being defiled by sandwich papers and empty bottles, as
the neighbouring woods are. But he who would view fair Tintern aright,
had better _not_ visit it on a bank holiday.
A similarly striking change between the England of sixty years since and
the England of to-day may be observed at beautiful Lynmouth and Lynton.
The place was a solitude when my parents and I visited it in, I think,
1818. We had a narrow escape in driving down from Lynton to the mouth
of the little stream. A low wall of unmortared stones alone protected
the road from the edge of a very formidable precipice; and just at the
worst point the horse my father was driving took fright at something,
and becoming unmanageable, dashed at the low wall, and absolutely got
his fore-feet over it! “George,” riding the other horse behind, was at
an hundred yards or so distance. But my father, with one bound to the
horse’s head, caught him by the bridle, and, by the sheer strength of
his remarkably powerful frame, forced him back into the road. It was not
a _mauvais quart d’heure_, but a very _mauvais quart de minute_--for it
was, I take it, all over in that time. Now the road is excellent, and
traversed daily in the summer season by some half dozen huge vans
carrying “tourists” from Ilfracombe to Lynton.
At the latter place, too, there is a large and extremely prettily
situated hotel, where, on the occasion of my first visit, I remember
that we obtained a modicum of bread and cheese at a lone cottage. Even
the Valley of Rocks is not altogether what it was, for the celebrated
“Castle Rock” has now well contrived paths to the top of it. I wrote a
few months ago in the book kept at the hotel, _ad hoc_ that I had
climbed the Castle Rock more than sixty years ago, and had now repeated
the feat. But in truth, the “climb” was in those days a different
affair. I remember my mother had a story of some old friend of hers
having been accompanied by her maid during a ramble through the Valley
of Rocks, and having been told, when she asked the maid what she thought
of it, that she considered it was kept very untidy! And truly the
criticism might be repeated at the present day not altogether
unreasonably, for the whole place is defiled by the traces of feeding.
Truly England, whether for better or worse, “_non è più come era
prima!_”
That was my first journey! Has any one of the very many others which I
have undertaken since equalled it in enjoyment? Ah! how sad was the
return to Harrow and lessons and pupil-room! And how I wished that the
old gig, with me on the little box between my parents’ knees, could have
been bound on an expedition round the world!
A leading feature, perhaps I should say _the_ leading feature, of the
social life of Harrow in those days consisted in a certain antagonism
between the vicar, the Rev. Mr. Cunningham, and the clerical element of
the school world, or perhaps it would be more correct to say, the Drury
element. Mr. Cunningham was in those days rather a man of mark among the
Low Church party. He was an ally of the Venns, of Daniel Wilson, and
that school, and was well known in his day as “Velvet-Cushion
Cunningham,” from a little book with that title which he had published.
He was of course an “evangelical” of the evangelicals; and among the
seven masters of the school there was not the slightest--I must not say
taint, but--savour of anything of the kind. Dr. Butler probably would
have found no difficulty in living in perfect harmony with the vicar;
but the latter--he and his ways and his doctrines--were especially
abhorrent to the Drurys. Of course they were not High Churchmen in the
sense which the term has acquired in these latter days, for nothing of
the kind was then known. They were of the old-fashioned sort, which had
come to be somewhat depreciatingly spoken of as “high and dry”!--though
in truth it is difficult to see with what justice the latter epithet
could be applied to many of them.
Harry Drury, who was perhaps foremost in his feeling of antagonism to
the vicar, was a man of decidedly literary tastes, though they shared
his devotion with those of a _bon vivant_. He was a ripe scholar, and
undoubtedly the vicar’s superior in talent and intellect. But he was
essentially a coarse man, coarse in manner and coarse in feeling.
Cunningham was the reverse of all this. He was, I believe, the son of a
London hatter, but in external manner and appearance he was a more
gentlemanlike man than any of the Harrow masters of that day, save Dr.
Butler. He had the advantage, too, of a handsome person and good
presence. But there was a something _too_ suave and _too_ soft, carrying
with it a certain suspicion of insincerity which prevented him from
presenting a genuine specimen of the real article. I believe his father
purchased the living for him under circumstances which were not
altogether free from suspicion of simony. I know nothing, however, of
these circumstances, and my impressions on the subject are doubtless
derived from the flouts and skits of his avowed enemies the Drurys.
There was, I remember, a story of his having, soon after coming to
Harrow, in conversation with some of his new parishioners, attributed
with much self-complacency his presentation to the living to his having
upon some occasion preached before Lord Northwick!--a result which no
Harrow inhabitant, clerk or layman, would have believed in the case of
his lordship, then often a resident on his property there, if the
preacher had been St. Paul. But again, _Audi alteram partem!_ which I
had no chance of doing, for we, though living on terms of neighbourly
intercourse with the vicar, were of the Drury faction.
I remember well an incident which may serve to illustrate the condition
of “tension” which prevailed during those years in the little Harrow
world. Mark Drury had two remarkably pretty daughters. They were in all
respects as thoroughly good and charming girls as they were pretty, and
were universal favourites in the society. Now Mark Drury’s pew in the
parish church, where of course he never appeared himself, for the reason
assigned on a former page, was situated immediately below the pulpit.
And on one occasion the vicar saw, or thought he saw, the two young
ladies in question laughing during his sermon, and so far forgot
himself, and was sufficiently ill-judged, indiscreet, wrong-headed, and
wrong-hearted to stop in his discourse, and, leaning over the pulpit
cushion to say aloud that he would resume it when his hearers could
listen to it with decency! The amount of ill-feeling and heart-burning
which the incident gave rise to may be imagined. Harry Drury, the cousin
of the young ladies, and, as I have said, Cunningham’s principal
antagonist, never for a long time afterwards came within speaking
distance of the vicar without growling “Brawler!” in a perfectly audible
voice.
I well remember, though I suppose it must be mainly from subsequent
hearing of it, the storm that was raised in the tea-cup of the Harrow
world by the incident of Byron’s natural daughter, Allegra, having been
sent home to be buried in Harrow Church. A solemn meeting was held in
the vestry, at which the vicar, all the masters (except poor old Mark),
and sundry of the leading parishioners were present, and at which it was
decided that no stone should be placed to commemorate the poor infant’s
name or mark the spot where her remains rested, the principal reason
assigned being that such a memorial might be injurious to the morals of
the Harrow schoolboys! Amid all this Cunningham’s innate and invincible
flunkeyism asserted itself, to the immense amusement of the
non-evangelical part of the society of the place, by his attempts to
send a message to Lord Byron through Harry Drury, Byron’s old tutor and
continued friend, to the effect that he, Cunningham, had, on reading
_Cain_, which was then scandalising the world, “felt a profound
admiration for the genius of the author”! “Did you indeed,” said Harry
Drury; “I think it the most blasphemous publication that ever came from
the pen.”
The whole circumstances, object, and upshot of this singular vestry
meeting were too tempting a subject to escape my mother’s satirical
vein. She described the whole affair in some five hundred verses, now
before me, in which the curiously contrasted characteristics of the
debaters at the meeting were very cleverly hit off. This was afterwards
shown to Harry Drury, who, though he himself was not altogether spared,
was so delighted with it, that he rewarded it by the present of a very
remarkable autograph of Lord Byron, now in my possession. It consists of
a quarto page, on which is copied the little poem, “Weep, daughters of a
royal line,” beginning with a stanza which was suppressed in the
publication. And all round the edges of the MS. is an inscription
stating that the verses were “copied for my friend, the Rev. Harry
Drury.”
Of course all this did not tend much to harmonise the conflicting
partisans of High and Low Church in the Harrow world of that day.
I may add here another “reminiscence” of those days, which is not
without significance as an illustration of manners.
Among the neighbours at Harrow was a Mr. ---- (well, I won’t print the
name, though all the parties in question must long since, I suppose,
have joined the majority) who had a family of daughters, the second of
whom was exceedingly pretty. One day this girl of some eighteen years or
so, came to my mother, who was always a special friend of all the young
girls, with a long eulogistic defence of the vicar. She was describing
at much length the delight of the assurances of grace which he had given
her, when my mother suddenly looking her straight in the eyes, said,
“Did he kiss you, Carrie?”
“Yes, Mrs. Trollope. He _did_ give me the kiss of peace. I am sure there
was no harm in that!”
“None at all, Carrie! For I am sure you meant none!” returned my mother.
“_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_ But remember, Carrie, that the kiss of
peace is apt to change its quality if repeated!”