SCHOOL
In one of the pleasantest valleys of sweet Somersetshire stands a large
red-brick house that bears unmistakably impressed on its exterior the
title "School." You would not take it for a "hall," or an hospital, or
an almshouse, or anything in the world but an institution for the rising
generation, in which the ways of the wide world are so successfully
imitated that, in the qualities of foresight, cunning, duplicity, and
general selfishness, the boy may indeed be said to be "father to the
man." The house stands on a slope towards the south, with a trim lawn
and carefully-kept gravel drive, leading to a front door, of which the
steps are always clean and the handles always bright. How a ring at
that door-bell used to bring all our hearts into our mouths. Forty boys
were we, sitting grudgingly over our lessons on the bright summer
forenoons, and not one of us but thought that ring might possibly
announce a "something" for him from "home." Home! what was there in the
word, that it should call up such visions of happiness, that it should
create such a longing, sickening desire to have the wings of a dove and
flee away, that it should make the present such a blank and comfortless
reality? Why do we persist in sending our children so early to school?
A little boy, with all his affections developing themselves, loving and
playful and happy, not ashamed to be fond of his sisters, and thinking
mamma all that is beautiful and graceful and good, is to be torn from
that home which is to him an earthly Paradise, and transferred to a
place of which we had better not ask the urchin his own private opinion.
We appeal to every mother--and it is a mother who is best capable of
judging for a child--whether her darling returns to her improved in her
eyes after his first half-year at school. She looks in vain for the
pliant, affectionate disposition that a word from her used to be
capable, of moulding at will, and finds instead a stubborn
self-sufficient spirit that has been called forth by harsh treatment and
intercourse with the mimic world of boys; more selfish and more
conventional, because less characteristic than that of men. He is
impatient of her tenderness now, nay, half ashamed to return it.
Already he aspires to be a man, in his own eyes, and thinks it manly to
make light of those affections and endearments by which he once set such
store. The mother is no longer all in all in his heart, her empire is
divided and weakened, soon it will be swept away, and she sighs for the
white-frock days when her child was fondly and entirely her own. Now, I
cannot help thinking the longer these days last the better. Anxious
parent, what do you wish your boy to become? A successful man in after
life?--then rear him tenderly and carefully at first. You would not bit
a colt at two years old; be not less patient with your own flesh and
blood. Nature is the best guide, you may depend. Leave him to the women
till his strength is established and his courage high, and when the
metal has assumed shape and consistency, to the forge with it as soon as
you will. Hardship, buffetings, adversity, all these are good for the
_youth_, but, for Heaven's sake, spare the _child_.
Forty boys are droning away at their tasks on a bright sunshiny morning
in June, and I am sitting at an old oak desk, begrimed and splashed with
the inkshed of many generations, and hacked by the knives of idler after
idler for the last fifty years. I have yet to learn by heart some two
score lines from the AEneid. How I hate Virgil whilst I bend over those
dog's-eared leaves and that uncomfortable desk. How I envy the white
butterfly of which I have just got a glimpse as he soars away into the
blue sky--for no terrestrial objects are visible from our schoolroom
window to distract our attention and interfere with our labours. I have
already accompanied him in fancy over the lawn, and the garden, and the
high white-thorn fence into the meadow beyond,--how well I know the deep
glades of that copse for which he is making; how I wish I was on my back
in its shadow now. Never mind, to-day is a half-holiday, and this
afternoon I will spend somehow in a dear delicious ramble through the
fairy-land of "out of bounds." The rap of our master's cane against his
desk--a gentlemanlike method of awakening attention and asserting
authority--startles me from my day-dream. "March," for we drop the Mr.
prefixed, in speaking of our pedagogue, "March is a bit of a Tartar, and
I tremble for the result."
"Egerton to come up."
Egerton goes up accordingly, with many misgivings, and embarks, like a
desperate man, on the loathed _infandum Regina jubes_.
The result may be gathered from March's observations as he returns me
the book.
"Not a line correct, sir; stand down, sir; the finest passage of the
poet shamefully mangled and defaced; it is a perfect disgrace to
Everdon. Remain in till five, sir; and repeat the whole lesson to Mr.
Manners."
"Please, sir, I tried to learn it, sir; indeed I did, sir."
"Don't tell me, sir; _tried_ to learn it, indeed. If it had been French
or German, or--or any of these useless branches of learning, you would
have had it by heart fast enough; but Latin, sir, Latin is the
foundation of a gentleman's education; Latin you were sent here to
acquire, and Latin, sir" (with an astounding rap on the desk), "you
_shall_ learn, or I'll know the reason why."
I may remark that March, though an excellent scholar, professed utter
contempt for all but the dead languages.
I determined to make one more effort to save my half-holiday.
"Please, sir, if I might look over it once more, I could say it when the
second class goes down; please, sir, won't you give me another chance?"
March was not, in schoolboy parlance, "half a bad fellow," and he did
give me another chance, and I came up to him once more at the conclusion
of school, having repeated the whole forty lines to myself without
missing a word; but, alas! when I stood again on the step which led up
to the dreaded desk, and gave away the book into those uncompromising
hands, and heard that stern voice with its "Now, sir, begin," my
intellects forsook me altogether, and while the floor seemed to rock
under me, I made such blunders and confusion of the chief's oration to
the love-sick queen, as drove March to the extremity of that very short
tether which he was pleased to call his "patience," and drew upon myself
the dreaded condemnation I had fought so hard to escape.
"Remain in, sir, till perfect, and repeat to Mr. Manners, without a
mistake--Mr. Manners, you will be kind enough to see, _without a
mistake_! Boys!" (with another rap of the cane) "school's up." March
locks his desk with a bang, and retires. Mr. Manners puts on his hat.
Forty boys burst instantaneously into tumultuous uproar, forty pairs of
feet scuffle along the dusty boards, forty voices break into song and
jest and glee, forty spirits are emancipated from the prison-house into
freedom and air and sunshine--forty, all save one.
So again I turn to the _infandum Eegina Jubes_, and sit me down and cry.
I had gone late to school, but I was a backward child in everything save
my proficiency in modern languages. I had never known a mother, and the
little education I had acquired was picked up in a desultory manner here
and there during my travels with my father, and afterwards in a gloomy
old library at Alton Grange, his own place in the same county as Mr.
March's school. My father had remained abroad till his affairs made it
imperative that he should return to England, and for some years we lived
in seclusion at Alton, with an establishment that even my boyish
penetration could discover was reduced to the narrowest possible limits.
I think this was the idlest period of my life. I did no lessons, unless
my father's endeavour to teach me painting, an art that I showed year
after year less inclination to master, could be called so. I had but
few ideas, yet they were very dear ones. I adored my father; on him I
lavished all the love that would have been a mother's right; and having
no other relations--none in the world that I cared for, or that cared
for me, even nurse Nettich having remained in Hungary--my father was
all-in-all. I used to wait at his door of a morning to hear him wake,
and go away quite satisfied without letting him know. I used to watch
him for miles when he rode out, and walk any distance to meet him on his
way home. To please him I would even mount a quiet pony that he had
bought on purpose for me, and dissemble my terrors because I saw they
annoyed my kind father. I was a very shy, timid, and awkward boy,
shrinking from strangers with a fear that was positively painful, and
liking nothing so well as a huge arm-chair in the gloomy oak wainscoted
library, where I would sit by the hour reading old poetry, old plays,
old novels, and wandering about till I lost myself in a world of my own
creating, full of beauty and romance, and all that ideal life which we
must perforce call nonsense, but which, were it reality, would make this
earth a heaven. Such was a bad course of training for a boy whose
disposition was naturally too dreamy and imaginative, too deficient in
energy and practical good sense. Had it gone on I must have become a
madman; what is it but madness to live in a world of our own? I shall
never forget the break-up of my dreams, the beginning, to me, of hard
practical life.
I was coiled up in my favourite attitude, buried in the depths of a huge
arm-chair in the library, and devouring with all my senses and all my
soul the pages of the _Morte d'Arthur_, that most voluminous and least
instructive of romances, but one for which, to my shame be it said, I
confess to this day a sneaking kindness. I was gazing on Queen
Guenever, as I pictured her to myself, in scarlet and ermine and pearls,
with raven hair plaited over her queenly brow, and soft violet eyes,
looking kindly down on mailed Sir Launcelot at her feet. I was holding
Arthur's helmet in the forest, as the frank, handsome, stalwart monarch
bent over a sparkling rill and cooled his sunburnt cheek, and laved his
chestnut beard, whilst the sunbeams flickered through the green leaves
and played upon his gleaming corslet and his armour of proof. I was
feasting at Camelot with the Knights of the Round Table, jesting with
Sir Dinadam, discussing grave subjects of high import with Sir Gawain,
or breaking a lance in knightly courtesy with Sir Tristram and Sir Bore;
in short, I was a child at a spectacle, but the spectacle came and went,
and grew more and more gorgeous at will. In the midst of my dreams in
walked my father, and sat down opposite the old arm-chair.
"Vere," said he, "you must go to school."
The announcement took away my breath: I had never, in my wildest
moments, contemplated such a calamity.
"To school, papa; and when?" I mustered up courage to ask, clinging like
a convict to the hope of a reprieve.
"The first of the month, my boy," answered my father, rather bullying
himself into firmness, for I fancy he hated the separation as much as I
did; "Mr. March writes me that his scholars will reunite on the first of
next month, and he has a vacancy for you. We must make a man of you,
Vere; and young De Rohan, your Hungarian friend, is going there too.
You will have lots of playfellows, and get on very well, I have no
doubt; and Everdon is not so far from here, and--and--you will be very
comfortable, I trust; but I am loth to part with you, my dear, and
that's the truth."
I felt as if I could have endured martyrdom when my father made this
acknowledgment. I could do anything if I was only coaxed and pitied a
little; and when I saw he was so unhappy at the idea of our separation,
I resolved that no word or look of mine should add to his discomfort,
although I felt my heart breaking at the thoughts of bidding him
good-bye and leaving the Grange, with its quiet regularity and peaceful
associations, for the noise and bustle and discipline of a large school.
Queen Guenever and Sir Launcelot faded hopelessly from my mental vision,
and in their places rose up stern forms of harsh taskmasters and
satirical playfellows, early hours, regular discipline, Latin and Greek,
and, worst of all, a continual bustle and a life in a crowd.
There were two peculiarities in my boyish character which, more than any
others, unfitted me for battling with the world. I had a morbid dread
of ridicule, which made me painfully shy of strangers. I have on many
an occasion stood with my hand on the lock of a door, dreading to enter
the room in which I heard strange voices, and then, plunging in with a
desperate effort, have retired again as abruptly, covered with
confusion, and so nervous as to create in the minds of the astonished
guests a very natural doubt as to my mental sanity. The other
peculiarity was an intense love of solitude. I was quite happy with my
father, but if I could not enjoy his society, I preferred my own to that
of any other mortal. I would take long walks by myself--I would sit for
hours and read by myself--I had a bedroom of my own, into which I hated
even a servant to set foot--and perhaps the one thing I dreaded more
than all besides in my future life was, that I should never, never, be
_alone_.
How I prized the last few days I spent at home; how I gazed on all the
well-known objects as if I should never see them again; how the very
chairs and tables seemed to bid me good-bye like old familiar friends.
I had none of the lively anticipations which most boys cherish of the
manliness and independence arising from a school-life; no long vista of
cricket and football, and fame in their own little world, with
increasing strength and stature, to end in a tailed coat, and even
whiskers! No, I hated the idea of the whole thing. I expected to be
miserable at Everdon, and, I freely confess, was not disappointed.