WE went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the
Railway had cut it up root and branch. A great trunk-line had swallowed
the playground, sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off the corner of
the house: which, thus curtailed of its proportions, presented itself, in
a green stage of stucco, profilewise towards the road, like a forlorn
flat-iron without a handle, standing on end.
It seems as if our schools were doomed to be the sport of change. We
have faint recollections of a Preparatory Day-School, which we have
sought in vain, and which must have been pulled down to make a new
street, ages ago. We have dim impressions, scarcely amounting to a
belief, that it was over a dyer’s shop. We know that you went up steps
to it; that you frequently grazed your knees in doing so; that you
generally got your leg over the scraper, in trying to scrape the mud off
a very unsteady little shoe. The mistress of the Establishment holds no
place in our memory; but, rampant on one eternal door-mat, in an eternal
entry long and narrow, is a puffy pug-dog, with a personal animosity
towards us, who triumphs over Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a
certain radiating way he had of snapping at our undefended legs, the
ghastly grinning of his moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the
insolence of his crisp tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and
flourish. From an otherwise unaccountable association of him with a
fiddle, we conclude that he was of French extraction, and his name
_Fidèle_. He belonged to some female, chiefly inhabiting a back-parlour,
whose life appears to us to have been consumed in sniffing, and in
wearing a brown beaver bonnet. For her, he would sit up and balance cake
upon his nose, and not eat it until twenty had been counted. To the best
of our belief we were once called in to witness this performance; when,
unable, even in his milder moments, to endure our presence, he instantly
made at us, cake and all.
Why a something in mourning, called ‘Miss Frost,’ should still connect
itself with our preparatory school, we are unable to say. We retain no
impression of the beauty of Miss Frost—if she were beautiful; or of the
mental fascinations of Miss Frost—if she were accomplished; yet her name
and her black dress hold an enduring place in our remembrance. An
equally impersonal boy, whose name has long since shaped itself
unalterably into ‘Master Mawls,’ is not to be dislodged from our brain.
Retaining no vindictive feeling towards Mawls—no feeling whatever,
indeed—we infer that neither he nor we can have loved Miss Frost. Our
first impression of Death and Burial is associated with this formless
pair. We all three nestled awfully in a corner one wintry day, when the
wind was blowing shrill, with Miss Frost’s pinafore over our heads; and
Miss Frost told us in a whisper about somebody being ‘screwed down.’ It
is the only distinct recollection we preserve of these impalpable
creatures, except a suspicion that the manners of Master Mawls were
susceptible of much improvement. Generally speaking, we may observe that
whenever we see a child intently occupied with its nose, to the exclusion
of all other subjects of interest, our mind reverts, in a flash, to
Master Mawls.
But, the School that was Our School before the Railroad came and
overthrew it, was quite another sort of place. We were old enough to be
put into Virgil when we went there, and to get Prizes for a variety of
polishing on which the rust has long accumulated. It was a School of
some celebrity in its neighbourhood—nobody could have said why—and we had
the honour to attain and hold the eminent position of first boy. The
master was supposed among us to know nothing, and one of the ushers was
supposed to know everything. We are still inclined to think the
first-named supposition perfectly correct.
We have a general idea that its subject had been in the leather trade,
and had bought us—meaning Our School—of another proprietor who was
immensely learned. Whether this belief had any real foundation, we are
not likely ever to know now. The only branches of education with which
he showed the least acquaintance, were, ruling and corporally punishing.
He was always ruling ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany ruler, or
smiting the palms of offenders with the same diabolical instrument, or
viciously drawing a pair of pantaloons tight with one of his large hands,
and caning the wearer with the other. We have no doubt whatever that
this occupation was the principal solace of his existence.
A profound respect for money pervaded Our School, which was, of course,
derived from its Chief. We remember an idiotic goggle-eyed boy, with a
big head and half-crowns without end, who suddenly appeared as a
parlour-boarder, and was rumoured to have come by sea from some
mysterious part of the earth where his parents rolled in gold. He was
usually called ‘Mr.’ by the Chief, and was said to feed in the parlour on
steaks and gravy; likewise to drink currant wine. And he openly stated
that if rolls and coffee were ever denied him at breakfast, he would
write home to that unknown part of the globe from which he had come, and
cause himself to be recalled to the regions of gold. He was put into no
form or class, but learnt alone, as little as he liked—and he liked very
little—and there was a belief among us that this was because he was too
wealthy to be ‘taken down.’ His special treatment, and our vague
association of him with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and Coral
Reefs occasioned the wildest legends to be circulated as his history. A
tragedy in blank verse was written on the subject—if our memory does not
deceive us, by the hand that now chronicles these recollections—in which
his father figured as a Pirate, and was shot for a voluminous catalogue
of atrocities: first imparting to his wife the secret of the cave in
which his wealth was stored, and from which his only son’s half-crowns
now issued. Dumbledon (the boy’s name) was represented as ‘yet unborn’
when his brave father met his fate; and the despair and grief of Mrs.
Dumbledon at that calamity was movingly shadowed forth as having weakened
the parlour-boarder’s mind. This production was received with great
favour, and was twice performed with closed doors in the dining-room.
But, it got wind, and was seized as libellous, and brought the unlucky
poet into severe affliction. Some two years afterwards, all of a sudden
one day, Dumbledon vanished. It was whispered that the Chief himself had
taken him down to the Docks, and re-shipped him for the Spanish Main; but
nothing certain was ever known about his disappearance. At this hour, we
cannot thoroughly disconnect him from California.
Our School was rather famous for mysterious pupils. There was another—a
heavy young man, with a large double-cased silver watch, and a fat knife
the handle of which was a perfect tool-box—who unaccountably appeared one
day at a special desk of his own, erected close to that of the Chief,
with whom he held familiar converse. He lived in the parlour, and went
out for his walks, and never took the least notice of us—even of us, the
first boy—unless to give us a deprecatory kick, or grimly to take our hat
off and throw it away, when he encountered us out of doors, which
unpleasant ceremony he always performed as he passed—not even
condescending to stop for the purpose. Some of us believed that the
classical attainments of this phenomenon were terrific, but that his
penmanship and arithmetic were defective, and he had come there to mend
them; others, that he was going to set up a school, and had paid the
Chief ‘twenty-five pound down,’ for leave to see Our School at work. The
gloomier spirits even said that he was going to buy us; against which
contingency, conspiracies were set on foot for a general defection and
running away. However, he never did that. After staying for a quarter,
during which period, though closely observed, he was never seen to do
anything but make pens out of quills, write small hand in a secret
portfolio, and punch the point of the sharpest blade in his knife into
his desk all over it, he too disappeared, and his place knew him no more.
There was another boy, a fair, meek boy, with a delicate complexion and
rich curling hair, who, we found out, or thought we found out (we have no
idea now, and probably had none then, on what grounds, but it was
confidentially revealed from mouth to mouth), was the son of a Viscount
who had deserted his lovely mother. It was understood that if he had his
rights, he would be worth twenty thousand a year. And that if his mother
ever met his father, she would shoot him with a silver pistol, which she
carried, always loaded to the muzzle, for that purpose. He was a very
suggestive topic. So was a young Mulatto, who was always believed
(though very amiable) to have a dagger about him somewhere. But, we
think they were both outshone, upon the whole, by another boy who claimed
to have been born on the twenty-ninth of February, and to have only one
birthday in five years. We suspect this to have been a fiction—but he
lived upon it all the time he was at Our School.
The principal currency of Our School was slate pencil. It had some
inexplicable value, that was never ascertained, never reduced to a
standard. To have a great hoard of it was somehow to be rich. We used
to bestow it in charity, and confer it as a precious boon upon our chosen
friends. When the holidays were coming, contributions were solicited for
certain boys whose relatives were in India, and who were appealed for
under the generic name of ‘Holiday-stoppers,’—appropriate marks of
remembrance that should enliven and cheer them in their homeless state.
Personally, we always contributed these tokens of sympathy in the form of
slate pencil, and always felt that it would be a comfort and a treasure
to them.
Our School was remarkable for white mice. Red-polls, linnets, and even
canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange
refuges for birds; but white mice were the favourite stock. The boys
trained the mice, much better than the masters trained the boys. We
recall one white mouse, who lived in the cover of a Latin dictionary, who
ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets, turned wheels,
and even made a very creditable appearance on the stage as the Dog of
Montargis. He might have achieved greater things, but for having the
misfortune to mistake his way in a triumphal procession to the Capitol,
when he fell into a deep inkstand, and was dyed black and drowned. The
mice were the occasion of some most ingenious engineering, in the
construction of their houses and instruments of performance. The famous
one belonged to a company of proprietors, some of whom have since made
Railroads, Engines, and Telegraphs; the chairman has erected mills and
bridges in New Zealand.
The usher at Our School, who was considered to know everything as opposed
to the Chief, who was considered to know nothing, was a bony,
gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man in rusty black. It was
whispered that he was sweet upon one of Maxby’s sisters (Maxby lived
close by, and was a day pupil), and further that he ‘favoured Maxby.’ As
we remember, he taught Italian to Maxby’s sisters on half-holidays. He
once went to the play with them, and wore a white waistcoat and a rose:
which was considered among us equivalent to a declaration. We were of
opinion on that occasion, that to the last moment he expected Maxby’s
father to ask him to dinner at five o’clock, and therefore neglected his
own dinner at half-past one, and finally got none. We exaggerated in our
imaginations the extent to which he punished Maxby’s father’s cold meat
at supper; and we agreed to believe that he was elevated with wine and
water when he came home. But, we all liked him; for he had a good
knowledge of boys, and would have made it a much better school if he had
had more power. He was writing master, mathematical master, English
master, made out the bills, mended the pens, and did all sorts of things.
He divided the little boys with the Latin master (they were smuggled
through their rudimentary books, at odd times when there was nothing else
to do), and he always called at parents’ houses to inquire after sick
boys, because he had gentlemanly manners. He was rather musical, and on
some remote quarter-day had bought an old trombone; but a bit of it was
lost, and it made the most extraordinary sounds when he sometimes tried
to play it of an evening. His holidays never began (on account of the
bills) until long after ours; but, in the summer vacations he used to
take pedestrian excursions with a knapsack; and at Christmas time, he
went to see his father at Chipping Norton, who we all said (on no
authority) was a dairy-fed pork-butcher. Poor fellow! He was very low
all day on Maxby’s sister’s wedding-day, and afterwards was thought to
favour Maxby more than ever, though he had been expected to spite him.
He has been dead these twenty years. Poor fellow!
Our remembrance of Our School, presents the Latin master as a colourless
doubled-up near-sighted man with a crutch, who was always cold, and
always putting onions into his ears for deafness, and always disclosing
ends of flannel under all his garments, and almost always applying a ball
of pocket-handkerchief to some part of his face with a screwing action
round and round. He was a very good scholar, and took great pains where
he saw intelligence and a desire to learn: otherwise, perhaps not. Our
memory presents him (unless teased into a passion) with as little energy
as colour—as having been worried and tormented into monotonous
feebleness—as having had the best part of his life ground out of him in a
Mill of boys. We remember with terror how he fell asleep one sultry
afternoon with the little smuggled class before him, and awoke not when
the footstep of the Chief fell heavy on the floor; how the Chief aroused
him, in the midst of a dread silence, and said, ‘Mr. Blinkins, are you
ill, sir?’ how he blushingly replied, ‘Sir, rather so;’ how the Chief
retorted with severity, ‘Mr. Blinkins, this is no place to be ill in’
(which was very, very true), and walked back solemn as the ghost in
Hamlet, until, catching a wandering eye, he called that boy for
inattention, and happily expressed his feelings towards the Latin master
through the medium of a substitute.
There was a fat little dancing-master who used to come in a gig, and
taught the more advanced among us hornpipes (as an accomplishment in
great social demand in after life); and there was a brisk little French
master who used to come in the sunniest weather, with a handleless
umbrella, and to whom the Chief was always polite, because (as we
believed), if the Chief offended him, he would instantly address the
Chief in French, and for ever confound him before the boys with his
inability to understand or reply.
There was besides, a serving man, whose name was Phil. Our retrospective
glance presents Phil as a shipwrecked carpenter, cast away upon the
desert island of a school, and carrying into practice an ingenious
inkling of many trades. He mended whatever was broken, and made whatever
was wanted. He was general glazier, among other things, and mended all
the broken windows—at the prime cost (as was darkly rumoured among us) of
ninepence, for every square charged three-and-six to parents. We had a
high opinion of his mechanical genius, and generally held that the Chief
‘knew something bad of him,’ and on pain of divulgence enforced Phil to
be his bondsman. We particularly remember that Phil had a sovereign
contempt for learning: which engenders in us a respect for his sagacity,
as it implies his accurate observation of the relative positions of the
Chief and the ushers. He was an impenetrable man, who waited at table
between whiles, and throughout ‘the half’ kept the boxes in severe
custody. He was morose, even to the Chief, and never smiled, except at
breaking-up, when, in acknowledgment of the toast, ‘Success to Phil!
Hooray!’ he would slowly carve a grin out of his wooden face, where it
would remain until we were all gone. Nevertheless, one time when we had
the scarlet fever in the school, Phil nursed all the sick boys of his own
accord, and was like a mother to them.
There was another school not far off, and of course Our School could have
nothing to say to that school. It is mostly the way with schools,
whether of boys or men. Well! the railway has swallowed up ours, and the
locomotives now run smoothly over its ashes.
So fades and languishes, grows dim and dies,
All that this world is proud of,
- and is not proud of, too. It had little reason to be proud of Our
School, and has done much better since in that way, and will do far
better yet.