Letter VIII.
I remember poor Flower with compassion, and not without respect, as a man who,
under more auspicious circumstances, might have passed his life happily for
himself, and perhaps honourably as well as usefully for his country. His
attainments and talents were, I have no doubt, very considerable in their kind;
and I am sure that his temper and disposition were naturally good. I never saw
so little punishment in any school. There was but one flogging during my stay
there; it was for running away, which was considered the heaviest of all
offences. The exhibition was then made as serious as possible; the instrument
was a scourge of packthread instead of a rod. But though punishments in private
schools were at that time, I believe, always much more severe than in public
ones, I do not remember that this was remarkable for severity. We stood in awe
and respect of him rather than fear. If there was nothing conciliating or
indulgent about him, there was no rigour ![]()
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or ill-nature; but
his manner was what you might expect to find in one who was habitually
thoughtful, and who, when not engaged in abstruse studies, had reason enough
for unhappiness, because of his domestic circumstances. His school was
declining. He was about fifty years of age; and having lost his first wife, had
married one of his maids, who took to drinking; the house, therefore, was in
disorder; the servants were allowed to take their own course, and the boys were
sadly neglected. In every thing which relates to personal cleanliness, they
were left to the care of themselves. I had a profusion of curly hair: just
before the holydays, it was thought proper to examine into the state of its
population, which was found to be prodigiously great; my head, therefore, was
plastered with soap, and in that condition I was sent home, with such sores in
consequence of long neglect, that my mother wept at seeing them.
Our morning ablutions, to the entire saving of all
materials, were performed in a little stream which ran through the barton, and
in its ordinary state was hardly more than ankle deep. We had porridge for
breakfast in winter, bread and milk in summer. My taste was better than my
appetite; the green leeks in this uncleanly broth gave me a dislike to that
plant, which I retain to this day (St. David forgive me!),
and if it were swimming with fat, as it usually was, I could better fast till
the hour of dinner than do violence to my stomach by forcing down the greasy
and offensive mixture. The bread and milk reminds me of an anecdote connected
with the fashion of those days. Because I was indulged with ![]()
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sugar in my bread and milk at home, when I went to school I was provided with a
store carefully secured in paper. I had a cocked hat for Sundays; during the
rest of the week it lay in my box upon the top of my clothes, and when the
paper of brown sugar was reduced in bulk, I deposited it in the cock of the
hat. As you may suppose, my fingers found their way there whenever I went to
the box, and the box was sometimes opened for that purpose; thus the sugar was
by little and little strewn over the hat. It was in a sweet clammy condition
the first time I was sent for from school by my
Aunt Tyler, to visit her at Bath; and as the cocked hat was
then in the last and lowest stage of its fashion, mine was dismissed to be
rounded by the hatter, and I never wore one again till I was at Madrid, where
round hats were prohibited.
One day in the week we had bread and cheese for dinner; or,
when baking day came round, a hot cake, with cheese or a small portion of
butter at our choice. This, to my liking, was the best dinner in the week. Some
of the boys would split their cake, lay the cheese in thin layers between the
halves, and then place it under a screw-press, so as to compress it into one
mass. This rule of going without meat one day in the week was then, I believe,
general in the country schools, and is still practised in many, retained
perhaps, for motives of frugality, from Catholic times; and yet, so stupid is
popular obstinacy, fish, even where it is most plentiful, is never used. One of
the servants had the privilege of selling gingerbread and such things. We had
bread and cheese for supper, and ![]()
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were permitted to raise
salads for this meal, in little portions of ground, into which what had been in
better times the flower-border of the great pleasure-garden was divided: these
portions were our property, and transferable by sale. We raised mustard and
cress, radishes and lettuce. When autumn came, we had no lack of apples, for it
is a country of orchards. The brook which has already been mentioned, passed
through one immediately before it entered the barton where our ablutions were
performed; the trees on one side grew on a steepish declivity, and in stormy
weather we constructed dams across the stream to stop the apples which were
brought down. Our master had an extensive orchard of his own, and employed the
boys to gather in the fruit: there was, of course, free license to eat on that
day, and a moderate share of pocketings would have been tolerated; but whether
original sin was particularly excited by that particular fruit or not, so it
was that a subtraction was made enormous enough to make inquiry unavoidable;
the boxes were searched in consequence, and the whole plunder was thus
recovered. The boys were employed also to
squall at the
bannets, that is, being interpreted, to throw at his
walnuts when it was time to bring them down; there were four or five fine trees
on the hill-side above the brook. I was too little to bear a part in this,
which required considerable strength; but for many days afterwards, I had the
gleaning among the leaves and broken twigs with which the ground was covered;
and the fragrance of those leaves, in their incipient decay, is one of those
odours which I can recall at will, and which, when-
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ever it
occurs, brings with it the vivid remembrance of past times.
One very odd amusement, which I never saw or heard of
elsewhere, was greatly in vogue at this school. It was performed with snail
shells, by placing them against each other, point to point, and pressing till
the one was broken in, or sometimes both. This was called conquering; and the
shell which remained unhurt, acquired esteem and value in proportion to the
number over which it had triumphed, an accurate account being kept. A great
conqueror was prodigiously prized and coveted, so much so indeed, that two of
this description would seldom have been brought to contest the palm, if both
possessors had not been goaded to it by reproaches and taunts. The victor had
the number of its opponents added to its own; thus when one conqueror of fifty
conquered another which had been as often victorious, it became conqueror of an
hundred and one. Yet even in this, reputation was sometimes obtained upon false
pretences. I found a boy one day, who had fallen in with a great number of
young snails, so recently hatched that the shells were still transparent, and
he was besmearing his fingers by crushing these poor creatures one after
another against his conqueror, counting away with the greatest satisfaction at
his work. He was a good-natured boy, so that I, who had been bred up to have a
sense of humanity, ventured to express some compassion for the snails, and to
suggest that he might as well count them and lay them aside unhurt. He
hesitated, and seemed inclined to assent till it struck him as a point of
honour, or of conscience, and ![]()
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then he resolutely said, no!
that would not do, for he could not then fairly say he had conquered them.
There is a surprising difference of strength in these shells, and that not
depending upon the size or species; I mean, whether yellow, brown, or striped.
It might partly be estimated by the appearance of the point, or top (I do not
know what better term to use): the strong ones were usually clear and glossy
there, and white if the shell were of the large, coarse, mottled brown kind.
The top was then said to be petrified; and a good conqueror of this description
would triumph for weeks or months. I remember that one of the greatest heroes
bore evident marks of having once been conquered. It had been thrown away in
some lucky situation, where the poor tenant had leisure to repair his
habitation, or rather where the restorative power of nature repaired it for
him, and the wall was thus made stronger than it had been before the breach, by
an arch of new masonry below. But in general I should think the resisting power
of the shell depended upon the geometrical nicety of its form.
One of the big boys one day brought down a kite with an
arrow, from the play-ground: this I think a more extraordinary feat than
Apollo’s killing Python, though a
Belvidere Jack Steel (this was the archer’s name)
would not make quite so heroic a statue. We had a boy there who wore
midshipman’s uniform, and whose pay must have more than maintained him at
school; his father was a purser, and such things were not uncommon in those
days. While I was at this school, the corporation of Bristol invited Rodney from Bath to a public dinner, after his
great ![]()
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victory; and we, to do him honour in our way, were
all marched down to the Globe at Newton, by the road side, that we might see
him pass, and give him three cheers. They were heartily given, and were
returned with great good humour from the carriage window. Another circumstance
has made me remember the day well. Looking about for conquerors in Newton
churchyard before we returned to school, I saw a slow-worm get into the ground
under a tombstone; and in consequence, when I met no long time afterwards with
the ancient opinion that the spinal marrow of a human body generates a serpent,
this fact induced me long to believe it without hesitation, upon the supposed
testimony of my own eyes. Though I had a full share of discomfort at Corston, I
recollect nothing there so painful as that of being kept up every night till a
certain hour, when I was dying with sleepiness. Sometimes I stole away to bed;
but it was not easy to do this, and I found that it was not desirable, because
the other boys played tricks upon me when they came. But I dreaded nothing so
much as Sunday evening in winter: we were then assembled in the hall, to hear
the master read a sermon, or a portion of
Stackhouse’s History of the Bible. Here I sat at the end of a long form, in
sight but not within feeling of the fire, my feet cold, my eyelids heavy as
lead, and yet not daring to close them, kept awake by fear alone, in total
inaction, and under the operation of a lecture more soporific than the
strongest sleeping dose. Heaven help the wits of those good people who think
that children are to be edified by having sermons read to them!
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After remaining there about twelve months, I was sent for
home, upon an alarm that the itch had broken out among us. Some of the boys
communicated this advice to their parents in letters which
Duplanien conveyed for them; all others, of course,
being dictated and written under inspection. The report, whether true or false,
accelerated the ruin of the school. A scandalous scene took place of mutual
reproaches between father and son, each accusing the other for that neglect the
consequences of which were now become apparent.
The dispute was renewed with more violence after the boys
were in bed. The next morning the master was not to be seen;
Charley appeared with a black eye, and we knew that
father and son had come to blows! Most, if not all, the Bristol boys were now
taken away, and I among them, to my great joy. But on my arrival at home I was
treated as a suspected person, and underwent a three days’ purgatory in
brimstone.
