I left Vienna by the carriage which carried the imperial mail, shortly
before Christmas, in very severe weather. It would be impossible to
construct a more comfortable carriage for the use of those to whom speed
is no object. It carried only two passengers and the courier, and was
abundantly roomy and well cushioned. It carried, of course, also all the
mails from Hungary and from Vienna to the north and westward, including
those to Munich and Paris and London. And to the best of my recollection
all these despatches, printed as well as written, were carried in the
hind boot of our conveyance. If they were not there I can’t guess where
they were!
I remember that I was tremendously great-coated, having, besides my
“box-coat,” a “buffalo robe,” which I had brought back with me from
America, and I have no recollection of suffering at all from cold. We
proceeded in very leisurely fashion; and I well remember the reply of
the courier to my question, how long we were to remain at the place at
which we were to dine, given with an air of mild surprise at my
thinking such a demand necessary. “Till we have done dinner!” said the
courier--“_Bis wir gespeist haben!_” The words seem still to echo in my
ears! To me, whose experiences were of the Quicksilver mail!
When we _had_ done dinner, and he asked me with leisurely courtesy if I
had dined well, he said, in answer to my confessing that I could have
wished nothing more, unless it were a cup of coffee, if perchance there
were one ready, “No doubt the hostess will make us one. It is best fresh
made!” And so, while the imperial mail, and all the Paris and London
letters, and the post-horses, waited at the door, the coffee _was_ made
and leisurely discussed!
I will upon this occasion also spare the reader all guide-book chatter,
and pass on to the arrival of myself and the friend who was with me, at
Dover, which arrival was a somewhat remarkable one.
We had travelled by Antwerp, which I wished to revisit for the sake of
the cathedral, and crossed from Ostend, where also I was not sorry to
pass a day.
We had a long and nasty passage, but at last reached Dover to find the
whole town and the surrounding hills under snow, and to be met by the
intelligence that all communication between Dover and London was
interrupted! Even the boat which used to ply between Dover and the
London Docks would not face the abominable weather, and was not running.
There was nothing for it but to take up our abode at the “King’s Head”
(no “Lord Warden” in those days!), and wait for the road to be opened.
We waited one day, two days, with no prospect of any amelioration of our
position. On the third day two young Americans who were in the house,
equally weather-bound with ourselves, and equally impatient of their
imprisonment, assured us that in their country the matter would speedily
be remedied, and declared their determination of getting to Canterbury
on a sledge. We had heard by that time that from Canterbury to London
the road was open. The people at the “King’s Head” assured us that no
such attempt had any chance of succeeding. But of course our American
friends considered that to be a strictly professional opinion, and
determined on starting. We agreed to share the adventure with them. Four
of the best post-horses we could find in Dover were hired, a couple of
postboys, whose pluck was stimulated by promises of high fees, were
engaged, and a sledge was rigged under the personal supervision of our
experienced friends.
On the fourth day we got ourselves and our respective trunks on to the
sledge, and started among the ill-omened prognostications of our host of
the “King’s Head” and his friends. I think the postboys did their utmost
bravely, but at the end of about five miles from Dover they dismounted
from their floundering horses and declared the enterprise an impossible
one. It was totally out of the question, they said, to reach Canterbury.
It would be quite as much as they could do to get back to Dover.
What was to be done? The boys were so evidently right that the Americans
did not attempt to gainsay their decision. A council of war was called,
the upshot of which was that our two American allies decided to return
to Dover with their and our baggage _and wraps_, while my friend and I
determined at all risks to push on to Canterbury on foot. We had eleven
miles of bleak country before us, which was simply one uniform
undulating field of snow. The baffled postboys gave us many minute
directions of signs and objects by which we were to endeavour to keep
the road. We had started from Dover about nine o’clock in the morning.
It was then not quite noon. The mail would leave Canterbury at ten at
night for London, and we had therefore ten hours before us for our
undertaking.
We thought that four, or, at the outside, five would be ample for the
purpose, if we were ever to get to Canterbury at all. But we did not
reach “The Fountain” in that much-longed-for city till past eight that
evening!
It was a terrible walk. Of course at no conceivable rate of progression
could we have been eight hours in walking eleven miles if we had
continued to progress at all. But we lost the road again and again!
sometimes got far away from it, and fought our way back to it by the
directions obtained at farm-houses or labourers’ cottages, from people
who evidently deemed our enterprise a desperate one. Mostly we were
struggling knee-deep in snow, once or twice plunging into and out of
drifts over our waists. We were not on foot quite all the time; for once
we rested in a hospitable cottage for an hour, when we were about six
miles from Canterbury. Our host there, who was, I take it, a waggoner,
strongly advised us to give it up, and offered to let us pass the night
in his cottage. We were already very much beaten, and were sorely
tempted to close with his proposal. Perhaps, if we had known that we
should never, as was the case, see those Americans again, we should have
done so. But much as our bodies needed rest, our souls needed triumph
more! So we turned out into the snow again, and--by eight o’clock did
reach the hospitable “Fountain”!
But we were in a sad plight, desperately wearied, a good deal bruised
and knocked about, and as thoroughly wet through literally as though we
had been walking in water instead of snow. Rest was delicious; a hot
supper was such delight as no “gods” had ever enjoyed. Good beds would
have been Elysium! But--the thought of the next morning gave us pause.
We had no rag of clothing of any sort save the thoroughly soaked things
on our backs. No boots or shoes! And how should we possibly put on again
those on our feet if once they were taken off? In London, if once
reached, all these troubles would be at an end!
Finally we decided to go on by the mail at ten that night. But here a
fresh disappointment awaited us. The mail was booked full inside! There
were two outside places, those on the roof behind the driver, available.
But we were dead beat, wet through to the bone, unprovided with any wrap
of any kind, and it was freezing hard!
But on to the mail we climbed at ten o’clock. I believe the good hostess
of “The Fountain” genuinely thought our proceeding suicidal, and the
refusal of her beds absolutely insane.
That journey from Canterbury to London was by far the worst I ever made.
It really was a very bad business. But at every change of horses I got
down, and holding on by the coach behind ran as far as my breath and
strength would allow me, and thus knocked a little warmth into my veins.
I could not persuade my companion to do likewise. He seemed to be
wearied and frozen into apathy. The consequence was that whereas I was
after some twelve hours in bed not a jot the worse, he was laid up for a
fortnight.
Shortly afterwards I assumed my new duties at Birmingham. The new
building had been completed, and was--or rather is, as all the world may
see to the present day--a very handsome one. The head master, whose
assistant I specially was, was Dr. Jeune, who became subsequently Bishop
of Peterborough. The second master, Mr. Gedge, had also an assistant
named Mason. Our duties were to teach Latin and Greek to any of the sons
of the inhabitants of Birmingham who chose to avail themselves of King
Edward’s benevolent foundation. None of the masters had anything to do
with the business of lodging or victualling boys. The boys were all day
boys, and our business was to teach them Latin and Greek during certain
hours of every day.
I soon became aware by a strangely subtle process of feeling rather than
observation that my eight years’ Winchester experience of schoolboy life
and ways had not constituted a favourable preparation for my present
work. I felt that I was working in an atmosphere and on a material that
was new to me. It would be absurd to imagine that all those sons of
Birmingham tradesmen were stupider or duller boys than the average of
our Winchester lads. But it appeared to me that it was far more
difficult to teach them with any fair amount of success. They were no
doubt all, or nearly all, the sons of men who had never learned anything
in their lives save the elements of a strictly commercial education. And
I felt myself tempted to believe that the results of heredity must
extend themselves even to the greater or lesser receptivity of one
description of teaching instead of another. I suppose that the
descendant of a long line of shoemakers would be more readily taught how
to make a shoe than how to build a ship. And it may be in like manner
that _ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes_ comes more readily to a boy
whose forefathers have for generations done the same thing than it would
to the descendant of generations unmoulded by any such discipline!
Corporal punishment was used, and naturally had to be resorted to much
more frequently by me than by my superior, whose work was concerned with
the older and better conducted portion of the boys. In fact as far as my
recollection at the present day goes, it seems to me that hardly any
morning or afternoon passed without the application of the cane. And
this corporal castigation, though devoid of all the judicial formality
which might have made our Winchester “scourging” a really moral
punishment if the frequency of it and the prevailing sentiment upon the
subject both of masters and scholars had been other than it was, was in
truth a very much severer infliction as regards the absolute pain to be
suffered by the patient. Three or four strokes with the cane over the
palm of the hand would be very much worse than the perfunctory swishing
with the peculiar Winchester rod. I do not remember that this caning was
ever judicially used as a sentence to be executed at any future time, or
that it was ever, for the most part, used to punish the idleness which
had prevented a boy from learning his lessons at his home. It was used
almost exclusively, as far as I remember, for the preservation of order
and silence during the school hours, and the correction of the offender
followed instantly on the commission of the offence.
And this necessity of enforcing order among a very undisciplined crew of
some forty or fifty lads of ages varying from perhaps twelve to about
fourteen or fifteen was by far the most irksome and difficult part of
my duty. I was accustomed to tuition. But the cumulation of the office
of beadle with that of teacher was new to me, and I did not like it. And
still less did I like the constant tendency of the urgent duties of the
first office to encroach upon those of the second.
My scholastic experiences had accustomed me to a state of things in
which idleness, violence, daredevil audacity, and neglect of duty had
been common enough, but in which organised trickery and deception had
been rarely seen. And I felt myself unfitted for the duties of a
policeman among these turbulent Birmingham lads. I never saw the face of
any one of them save during the school hours; and I remember thinking at
the time that, had this been otherwise, I might have obtained a moral
influence over at least some of them, which might have been more useful
than all my efforts during school hours to force the rules and
principles of syntax into unwilling brains, accustomed to the habitual
defiance of them during all the remainder of their lives.
It appeared to me that I was engaged in the perpetual, and somewhat
hopeless, task of endeavouring to manufacture silk purses out of sows’
ears; and I confess that I never put on my academical gown to go into
school without feeling that I was going to an irksome, and, I feared,
unprofitable labour. I tried hard to do my duty; but I fear that I was
by no means the right man in the right place.
No preparation of any kind, beyond assuming my gown and trencher cap,
before going into school was needed, and I had, therefore, abundance of
leisure, during which I did a considerable quantity of miscellaneous
reading, not perhaps altogether so unprofitable as the advocates of
regular study devoted to some well-defined end might suppose.
We endeavoured--my colleague Mason and I--I remember, to get up a
debating society among the few--very few--young men, with whom we had
become acquainted. But it did not succeed. Young Birmingham, intent on
making, and on its way to make, “plums” in hardware, did not think that
“debating” was the best way of employing the hours that could be spared
from the counting-house.
There might, no doubt, have been found a better element of social
intercourse in the younger clergy of the town; but they were all
strongly “evangelical,” which was at that time quite sufficient to
entail an oil-and-vinegar-like mutual repulsion between them and the
young Wykehamist. And this, involving as it does a confession of a
discreditable amount of raw young-man’s prejudice, I mention as an
illustration of the current opinions, feelings, and mental habits of the
time, for, after all, I was not more prejudiced and more stupid than the
rest of the world around me.
In fact my life at Birmingham was for the most part a very solitary one.
I used to come home tired and worn out to my lodgings with Mrs. Clements
in New Hall Street; and the prospect of a lonely evening with my book,
my teapot, and my pipe, was not unwelcome to me, for it was, at least,
repose and quiet after noise and turmoil. Every now and then I used to
dine and pass the evening with Dr. Jeune; and these were my red-letter
days. Jeune had married the daughter of Dr. Symonds, the Warden of
Wadham. She was a tall and very handsome woman, as well as an extremely
agreeable one. At first, I remember, I used to think that if she had
been the daughter of anybody else than the “Head of a House,” one just
emerging from _statu pupillari_ might have found her more charming. But
this soon wore off as we got to know each other better. And long talks
with Mrs. Jeune are the pleasantest--indeed, I think I may say the only
pleasant--recollections of my life at Birmingham.