My Latin prose was always the greatest stumbling-block in my work, and I
was most trying, and inveterately careless over it, making the same
mistake over and over again. At last Bradley decreed publicly, that for
each of my commonest blunders, one of my companions should--kiss me!
They thought it great fun, but I declared I would not submit. The decree
had a good effect so far, that, for a very long time--a most unusually
long time, the mistakes were evaded. At last, after about three weeks, a
morning came when one of the mistakes occurred again. The fellow
appointed to kiss me for this mistake was a big Scotchman named Buchan.
Immediately the whole room was in motion, and Buchan in hot pursuit. I
barricaded the way with chairs, jumped on the table, splashing right and
left from all the inkstands, but eventually I was caught and--kissed.
In a blind fury, scarcely knowing what I did, I knocked Buchan's head
against the sharp edge of the bookcase, and, seizing a great Liddell and
Scott Lexicon, rushed upon Bradley, who was seated unsuspecting in a low
chair by the fire, and, taking him unawares, banged him on the bald
scalp with the lexicon till I could bang no longer. Bradley, after this,
naturally said I must leave. I instantly fled over hedge and ditch
fourteen miles to Harrow, and took refuge with the Vaughans, and after a
day or two, Dr. Vaughan, by representing the fatal injury it would do me
to be left tutorless just when I was going up to Oxford, persuaded
Bradley to take me back and teach me as before. But this he consented to
do only on condition that he was never expected to speak to me out of
work-time, and he never did. My Southgate life henceforth was full of
(in many ways well-deserved) petty hardships, though they were made
endurable, because the time in which they had to be endured became every
day more limited.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_Southgate, Feb. 6, 1853._--Bradley of course keeps aloof, but is
not unkind to me, and it seems nothing to come back here, with
Oxford as a bright guiding-star.... I now work all day as if it
were the last day of preparation, and Walker and I question each
other in the evening."
"_Feb. 12._--I have been in my Southgate district all afternoon.
The wretchedness and degradation of the people is such as only
sight can give an idea of. In the last house in the upper alley
live the Gudgeons, where two children were born a few days ago, and
died a few hours after. I found Mrs. Gudgeon downstairs, for she
had brought the thing she called a bed there, because, she said, if
she was upstairs the children banging the doors maddened her. Two
dirty shaggy children, never washed or combed since their mother
was taken ill, were tugging at her; the eldest daughter, in
tattered clothes and with dishevelled hair, was washing some rags,
the fumes of which filled the room, while the floor was deep in
dirt. Since the mother has been ill she has had the only blanket
the family possess, so that she says the children howl with cold
all night."
"_Feb. 13._--To-day I found six of the Gudgeon children sitting on
three-legged stools, huddled round a miserable fire, the door
locked to prevent their running out into the snow. The mother said
'the Almighty knew what was good when He took the two babies; He
knew I couldn't tell what in the world I was to do with
them--though they were pretty babies, they were, every bit like
little waxwork dolls. I sent for the doctor, but it was a cold
night, and I was a poor woman, so he wouldn't come; if he had come,
I should have known they wouldn't live, and should have had them
baptized, and then I should have been happier about them.' I asked
where the family all contrived to sleep. 'Why, sir,' she said, 'you
know we have but two beds, and I sleep in the middle of one with
Martha on one side and Polly on the other, and Lisa has her head
out at the bottom, and sleeps at our feet; and father sleeps in the
little bed, with Emma on one side and Tom on the other, and Georgie
he lies at their feet, and Lu she lies with her grandmother.'"
"In another cottage I found that a good woman, Mrs. Caius, had just
taken in a dwarf child who had been much ill-treated by the woman
that took care of it. It had been dashed to and fro with
convulsions for three hours, and now its limbs were quite rigid and
stiff. It had not been stripped or washed for days, and its face
was so begrimed with dirt that the features were scarcely
discernible."
"_February 19._--Aunt Kitty has done a most kind act in securing
Mr. Jowett's protection for me at Oxford. I have had a kind note
from him, in which his using my Christian name at once is very
reassuring, though the fact that the seventeenth word he ever
addressed to me is a Latin one looks rather formidable for future
conversations."
Unfortunately, when I was just prepared to go up to Oxford for
"Matriculation," I caught a violent chill while learning to skate, and,
just when I should have started, became most seriously ill with
inflammation of the lungs. As soon as I was able to be moved, I went to
the Vaughans at Harrow, where I soon recovered under kind care and
nursing. I always feel that I owe much in every way to the kindness and
hospitality of my cousin Kate during these years of my life. As the
authorities at the University were induced to give me a private
examination later, in place of the one I had missed, I only remained at
Southgate for a few days more.
_To_ MY MOTHER.
"_March 13._--My mother will like a letter on my nineteenth
birthday--so very old the _word_ makes it seem, and yet I feel just
as if I were the dear mother's little child still; only now every
year I may hope to be more of a comfort to her.
"Yesterday afternoon I went with Papillon to take leave of the
(Epping) Forest. It was a perfect day; such picturesque lights and
shades on the Edmonton levels. We went through Chingford
churchyard, and then through the muddy forest to the old Hunting
Lodge, which I had never reached before, and felt to be the one
thing I _must_ see. It is a small, gabled, weather-beaten house,
near a group of magnificent oaks on a hill-top. Inside is the
staircase up which Elizabeth _rode_ to dinner in her first ecstasy
over the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Afterwards, I suppose
because she found it easy, she had a block put at the top from
which she mounted to ride down again. To prove the tradition, a
pony is now kept in the house, on which you may ride up and down
the stairs in safety. The lodge is still inhabited by one of the
oldest families of forest-rangers, who have been there for
centuries: in a room upstairs are the portraits of their ancestors,
and one bedroom is surrounded with tapestry which they declare was
wrought by the Queen's own needle.
"And to-morrow I am going to Oxford--how exciting!"