"_Sheen, March 1._--I never saw Augustus look anything like so
well--and it is the look of health, ruddy and firm, and his face
rounder. The only thing is that he stoops, as if there were
weakness in the back, but perhaps it is partly shyness, for I
observed he did it more at first. He did look very shy the first
day--hung his head like a snowdrop, crouched out of sight, and was
with difficulty drawn out; but I do not think it is at all because
he is cowed, and he talked more yesterday. The Bishop was very much
pleased with him, and thought him much improved.... He came without
either greatcoat or handkerchief, but did not appear to want the
one, and had lost the other. He said most decidedly that he was
happy, far happier than at Mr. Kilvert's, happier than he expected
to be; and, though I felt all the time what an uncongenial element
it must be, he could not be in it under better circumstances."
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_March 4._--As you are ill, I will tell you my adventure of
yesterday to amuse you. I went out with a party of friends to play
at hare-and-hounds. I was hare, and ran away over hedges and
ditches. At last, just as I jumped over a hedge, Macphail caught
me, and we sat down to take breath. Just then Hoare ran up
breathless and panting, and threw himself into the hedge crying
out, 'We are pursued by navvies.' The next minute, before I could
climb back over the hedge, I found myself clutched by the arm, and
turning round, saw that a great fellow had seized me, and that
another had got Macphail and another Hodgson Junior. They dragged
us a good way, and then stopped and demanded our money, or they
would have us down and one should suffer for all. Macphail and
Hoare were so frightened that they gave up all their money at once,
but I would not give up mine. At last they grew perfectly furious
and declared they _would_ have our money to buy beer. I then gave
them a shilling, but hid the half-sovereign I had in my pocket, and
after we had declared we would not give them any more, they went
away.
"To cut the story short, I got Hodgson Junior (for the others were
afraid) to go with me to the farmer on whose land the men were
working, and told what had happened. He went straight to the field
where the navvies were and made them give up all our money, turned
one out of his service, and threatened the other two, and we came
back to Harrow quite safe, very glad to have got off so well.
"What do you think! the fever has broken out in Vaughan's, and if
any other house catches it, we are to go--home!"
"_March 9._--All the school is in an uproar, for all Vaughan's
house went down yesterday. Two boys have the fever, and if any one
else catches it, we shall all go home. What fun it will be. The
fever came straight from Eton with some velocipedes. Everybody now
thinks everybody else has the fever. I am shunned by all because I
have a sore throat, and half-a-yard is left on each side of me in
form. Boys suck camphor in school. Endless are the reports.
'Pember's got the fever.'--'No, he hasn't.'--'Yes, he has, for it's
broke out in Harris's.'--'Then we shall all go home. Hurrah!'--'No,
it's all a gull!'"
* * * * *
"My adventure with the navvies has been a very good thing for me,
as some fellows say 'that little Hare has really got some pluck.'"
"_March 10._--Hurrah! Vaughan has caught the fever. The Vaughanites
are all gone. Valletort is gone. Waldegrave is gone. But the great
news is we all go home the day after to-morrow. Now if you don't
write the instant you get this you will delay my return home. So
pray, Mamma, do--do--do--do. I cannot write much, for the school is
so hurry-scurry. There will be no Trial--oh hip! hip! Oh pray do
write directly! I shall see you soon. Hurrah!"
(After Easter holidays), "_April 14._--When I got here, I found
Davenport was gone and Dirom come into our room. The bells rang all
night for the return of the school. We are busy at our Trial, which
we do with our masters in form. We did Ovid this morning, and I
knew much more about it than many other fellows."
"_Saturday._--To-day has been a whole holiday, as it always is at
the end of Trial. I have got off very well, and learnt eighty lines
more than I need have done, for we need only have learnt fifty
lines, and I knew more of other things than many others.
"To-day was 'Election Day'--commonly called Squash Day (oh, how
glad I am it is over), the day most dreaded of all others by the
little boys, when they get squashed black and blue, and almost
turned inside out. But you won't understand this, so I will tell
you. Platt, horrid Platt, stands at one side of Vaughan's desk in
school, and Hewlett at the other, and read the names. As they are
read, you go up and say who you vote for as cricket-keeper, and as
you come out, the party you vote against squash you, while your
party try to rescue you. Sometimes this lasts a whole hour (without
exaggeration it's no fun), but to-day at breakfast the joyful news
came that the fourth form was let off squash. It was such a
delight. The fifth form were determined that we should have
something though, for as we came out of Bill, they tried to knock
our hats to pieces, and ourselves to pieces too."
"_April 24._--The boys have all begun to wear strawhats and to buy
insect-nets, for many are very fond of collecting insects, and to
my delight I found, when I came up, that they did not at all
despise picking primroses and violets."
"_April 28._--The other day, as Sturt was staying out, I had to fag
in his place. I had to go to that horrid Platt at Ben's. At the
door of Ben's was P----. I asked him which was Platt's room, and he
took me upstairs and pushed me into a little dark closet, and when
I got out of that, into a room where a number of fellows were at
tea, and then to another. At last I came to some stairs where two
boys were sitting cross-legged before a door. They were the
tea-fags. I went in, and there were Platt and his brother, very
angry at my being late, but at last they let me go, or rather I was
kicked out of the house.
"To-day we went to hear a man read the 'Merchant of Venice' in
Speech-room. Such fun: I liked it so much."
"_May 1._--Yesterday I was in a predicament. Hewlett, the head of
our house, sent me with a note to Sporling, the head of the school,
in Vaughan's new house. I asked a boy which was Sporling's. He told
me that I should find him upstairs, so I went up stairs after
stairs, and at the top were two monitors, and as I looked
bewildered by the long passages, they told me which was Sporling's
room. When I came out with an answer to the note, they called after
me, and ordered me to give Hewlett their compliments, and tell him
not to be in too great a hurry to get into Sporling's shoes. You
must obey a monitor's orders, and if you don't you get a wapping;
but I was pretty sure to get a wapping anyway--from the monitors if
I did not deliver the message, and from Hewlett for its
impertinence. I asked a great many boys, and they all said I must
tell Hewlett directly. At last I did: he was in a great rage, but
said I might go.
"I have 7s. 6d. owed me, for as soon as the boys have any money
they are almost obliged to lend it; at least you never have any
peace till it is all gone. Some of the boys keep rabbits in the
wells of their studies, but to-night Simmy has forbidden this."
"_June._--On Sunday in the middle of the Commandments it was so hot
in chapel that Kindersley fell down in a fit. He was seized head
and foot and carried out, struggling terribly, by Smith and Vernon
and others: and the boys say that in his fit he seized hold of Mr.
Middlemist's (the Mathematical Master's) nose and gave it a very
hard tweak; but how far this is true I cannot tell. However, the
whole chapel rose up in great consternation, some thinking one
thing and some another, and some not knowing what to think, while
others perhaps thought as I did, that the roof was coming down. Dr.
Vaughan went on reading the prayers, and Kindersley shrieking, but
at last all was quiet. Soon, however, there was another row, for
Miles fainted, and he was carried out, and then several others
followed his example. That night was so hot that many of the boys
slept on the bare floor, and had no bedclothes on, but the next day
it rained and got quite cold, and last night we were glad of
counterpanes and blankets again."
"_The Bishop's Holiday._--The cricket-fagging, the dreadful,
horrible cricket-fagging comes upon me to-day. I am Boy in the
House on the extra whole holiday, and shall have cricket-fagging in
the evening at the end of a hard day's other fagging."
"_Saturday._--I must write about the awful storm of last night. I
had been very ill all day, and was made to take a powder in
marmalade--Ah-h--bah!--and went to sleep about twelve with the
window wide open because of the heat. At half-past two I awoke
sick, when to my astonishment, it being quite dark, flash after
flash of lightning illuminated the room and showed how the rain was
pouring in floods through the open window. The wind raged so that
we thought it would blow the house down. We heard the boys
downstairs screaming out and running about, and Simmy and Hewlett
trying to keep order. I never saw such a storm. All of a sudden, a
long loud clap of thunder shook the house, and hail like great
stones mingled with the rain came crashing in at the skylights.
Another flash of lightning illuminated the room, and continued
there (I suppose it must have struck something) in one broad flame
of light, bursting out like flames behind the window: I called out
'Fire, fire, the window's on fire.' This woke Buller, who had been
sleeping soundly all this time, and he rushed to the window and
forced it down with the lightning full in his eyes. Again all was
darkness, and then another flash showed what a state the room was
in--the books literally washed off the table, and Forster and Dirom
armed with foot-pans of water. Then I threw myself on my bed in
agonies of sickness: not a drop of water was to be had to drink: at
last Buller found a little dirty rain-water, and in an instant I
was dreadfully sick.... You cannot think what the heat was, or what
agonies of sickness I was in."[44]
"_June 13._--I have cricket-fagged. Maude, my secret helper in
everything, came and told me what to do. But one ball came and I
missed it, then another, and I heard every one say, 'Now did you
see that fool; he let a ball pass. Look. Won't he get wapped!' I
had more than thirty balls and missed all but one--yet the
catapulta was not used. I had not to throw up to any monitors;
Platt did not come down for some time, and I had the easiest place
on the cricket-field, so it will be much worse next time. Oh, how
glad I was when half-past eight came! and when I went to take my
jacket up, though I found it wringing wet with dew.
"The next day was Speech-day, but, with my usual misfortune, I was
Boy in the House. However I got off after one o'clock. All the boys
were obliged to wear straw-coloured or lavender kid-gloves and to
be dressed very smart.... When the people came out of Speeches, I
looked in vain for Aunt Kitty, but Aunt Kitty never came; so, when
we had cheered everybody of consequence, I went back with the
others to eat up the remains of Simmy's fine luncheon, and you may
guess how we revelled in jellies and fruit.
"The boys in our house now play at cricket in the corridor."
"_June._--I have been cricket-fagging all evening, and it was
dreadful; Platt was down, the catapulta was used, and there were
very few fags, so I had very hard fagging.... Platt bellowed at me
for my stupidity, and Platt's word is an oracle, and Platt's nod
strikes terror into all around."
"_June 16._--I have been for my Exeat to Brook Street.... At
breakfast the Archbishop of Dublin came in. He is a very funny old
man[45] and says such funny things. He gave us proverbs, and
everybody a piece of good advice."
"_July._--I have found a beautiful old house called Essingham
standing in a moat full of clear water. It is said to have been
inhabited once by Cardinal Wolsey.
"Last night I cricket-fagged, very hard work, and I made Platt very
angry; but when I told him my name, he quite changed, and said I
must practise and learn to throw up better, and when the other
monitors said I ought to be wapped, Platt (!!) said, 'I will take
compassion upon him, because when I first came to Harrow I could do
no better.'"
If it had not been for constant sickness, the summer holidays of 1847
would have been very happy ones. I found my dear old Grandmother Mrs.
Oswald Leycester at Lime, which prevented our going to the Rectory, and
it was the greatest happiness to read to her, to lead her about, and in
every way to show my gratitude for past kindnesses at Stoke. When she
left us, we went for the rest of the holidays to the Palace at Norwich,
which was always enchanting to me--from the grand old library with its
secret room behind the bookcase, to the little room down a staircase of
its own, where the old nurse Mrs. Burgess lived--one of the thinnest and
dearest old women ever seen--surrounded by relics of her former charges.
Aunt Kitty was pleased with my improvement in drawing, and she and Kate
Stanley encouraged me very much in the endless sketches I made of the
old buildings in Norwich. "Honour the beginner, even if the follower
does better," is a good old Arabic proverb which they thoroughly
understood and practised. We spent the day with the Gurneys at Earlham,
where I saw the heavenly-minded Mrs. Catherine Gurney ("Aunt Catherine")
and also Mrs. Fry, in her long dark dress and close white cap, and we
went to visit the Palgraves at Yarmouth in a wonderful old house which
once belonged to Ireton the regicide. But a greater delight was a visit
of several days which we paid to the Barings at Cromer Hall, driving
the whole way with the Stanleys through Blickling and Aylsham, a journey
which Arthur Stanley made most charming by the books which he read to us
about the places we passed through. We lingered on the way with Miss
Anna Gurney, a little old lady, who was paralysed at a very early age,
yet had devoted her whole life to the good of those around her, and who,
while never free from suffering herself, seemed utterly unconscious of
her own trials in thinking of those of others. She lived in a beautiful
little cottage at Northrepps, full of fossils and other treasures, close
to the sea-coast.
Lord and Lady Shrewsbury[46] (the father and mother of the Princesses
Doria and Borghese) came to meet my mother at Cromer Hall, perfectly
full of the miraculous powers of "L'Estatica" and "L'Addolorata," which
they had witnessed in Italy, and of which they gave most extraordinary
accounts.
The kindness of "Uncle Norwich" caused me to love him as much as I
dreaded Uncle Julius. In his dealings with his diocese I have heard that
he was apt as a bishop to be tremendously impetuous; but my aunt knew
how to calm him, and managed him admirably. He wonderfully wakened up
clerical life in Norfolk. Well remembered is the sharpness with which he
said to Dean Pellew, who objected to a cross being erected on the
outside of the cathedral, "Never be ashamed of the cross, Mr. Dean,
never be ashamed of the cross." It was his custom to pay surprise visits
to all Norwich churches on Sunday afternoons. On one of these occasions,
an old clergyman--fellow of his college for forty years--who had lately
taken a small living in the town, was the preacher. High and dry was the
discourse. Going into the vestry afterwards, "A very old-fashioned
sermon, Mr. H.," said the Bishop. "A very good-fashioned sermon _I_
think, my lord," answered the vicar.
[Illustration: Edward Stanley