The Christmas before my entrance at Westminster, I
remember seeing in the newspapers the names of those boys who acted in the
Westminster Play that year (1787). For one who knew nothing of the school, nor
of any person in it, it was something to be acquainted with three or four boys,
even by name; and I pleased myself with thinking that they were soon to be my
friends. This was a vain fancy in both senses of the word: by their being
selected to perform in the Play, I supposed they were studious and clever boys,
with whom I should of course become familiar; and I had no notion of the
inequality
| 144 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE |
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 145 |
His first efforts in authorship were, however, made as a
periodical essayist, before he left school. The Microcosm, which the Etonians had recently
published, excited a spirit of emulation at Westminster; and soon after I went
there, some of the senior king’s scholars, of whom Oliphant was at the head, commenced a weekly
paper called the Trifler. As the
master’s authority in our age of lax discipline could not prevent this,
Smith contented himself, in his
good-natured easy way, with signifying his disapprobation, by giving as a text
for a theme, on the Monday after the first number appeared, these words
scribimus indocti doctique.
There were two or three
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My first attempt to appear in print was in the aforesaid
Trifler. I composed an elegy
upon my poor little sister’s death, which took place just at that time.
The verses were written with all sincerity of feeling, for I was very deeply
affected: but that they were very bad I have no doubt; indeed I recollect
enough of them to know it. However, I sent them by the penny post, signing them
with the letter B; and in the next number this notice was taken of the
communication: “B’s Elegy must undergo some alterations, a
liberty all our correspondents must
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 147 |
Curly heads are not common, I doubt whether they can be
reckoned at three per cent, upon the population of this country; but luckily
for me, the present Sir Charles Burrell
(old Burrell as we then called him, a very good-natured
man) had one as well as myself. The space between Palace Yard and St.
Margaret’s Churchyard was at that time covered with houses. You must
remember them, but I knew all the lanes and passages there; intricate enough
they were, and afforded excellent cover, just in the most dangerous part, on
the border, when we were going out of bounds, or returning home from such an
expedition. The improvements which have laid all open there, have done no
service to the Westminster boys, and have deprived me of some of the
pleasantest jogging-places for memory that London used to contain. In one of
these passages was the door of a little school-master, whose academy was
announced by a board upon the front of a house, close to St. Margaret’s
Churchyard. Some of the day boys in my remove took it into their heads, in the
pride of Westminster, to annoy this academician, by beating up his quarters,
and one day I joined in the party.
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At a public school you know something of every boy in your
own boarding-house, and in your own form; you are better acquainted with those
in your own remove (which at Westminster, means half a form); and your
intimacies are such as choice may make from these chances of juxta-position.
All who are above you you know by sight and by character, if they have any: to
have none indicates an easy temper, inclined rather to good than evil. Of those
who are below you, unless they are in the same house, you are acquainted with
very few, even by name. The
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 149 |
Of my own contemporaries there, a fair proportion have
filled that place and maintained that character in the world, which might have
been expected from the indications of their boyhood. Some have manifested
talents which were completely latent at that time;
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Our boarding house was under the tyranny of W. F——. He was, in Westminster language, a great beast; that is, in plain truth, a great brute; as great a one as ever went upon two legs. But there are two sorts of human brutes—those who partake of wolf-nature or of pig-nature, and F—— was of the better breed, if it be better to be wolfish than swinish. He would have made a good prize-fighter, a good buccaneer, or, in the days of Coeur de Lion or of my Cid, a good knight, to have cut down the misbelievers with a strong arm and a hearty good will. Every body feared and hated him; and yet it was universally felt that he saved the house from the tyranny of a greater beast than himself. This was a fellow by name B——, who was mean and malicious, which F—— was not: I do not know what became of him, his name has not appeared in the Tyburn Calendar, which was the only place to look for it, and if he has been hanged, it must have been under an alias, an observation which is frequently made when he is spoken of by his schoolfellows. He and F—— were of an age and standing, the giants of the house, but F—— was the braver, and did us the good office of keeping him in order. They hated each other cordially, and the evening before we were rid of “Butcher B——”, F—— gave the whole house the great satisfaction of giving him a good thrashing.
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 151 |
It was so obviously impossible to put Latin and Greek into
F——, at either end, even if there had been any use in
so doing, that no attempt was made at it. The Greek alphabet he must have
known, but he could have known nothing more of Greek, nor indeed of any thing
else, than just to qualify him for being crammed to pass muster, at passing
from one form to another; and so he was floated up to the Shell, beyond which
the tide carried no one. He never did an exercise for himself of any kind; they
were done by deputy, whom the fist appointed; and after awhile it was my ill
fortune to be promoted to that office. My orders were that the exercises must
always be bad enough; and bad enough they were: I believe, indeed, that the
habit of writing bad Latin for him spoilt me for writing it well, when, in
process of time, I had exercises of the same kind to compose in my own person.
It was a great deliverance when he left school. I saw him once afterwards, in
the High Street at Oxford. He recognised me instantly, stopped me, shook me
heartily by the hand, as if we had been old friends, and said,
“I hear you became a devilish fine fellow after I left, and
used to row Dodd (the usher of the house) famously!”
The look and the manner with which these words were spoken I remember
perfectly; the more so, perhaps, because he died soon afterwards, and little as
it was to have been expected, there was something in his death which excited a
certain degree of respect, as well as pity. He went into the army, and perished
in our miserable expedition to St. Domingo, where, by putting himself forward
on all
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That fever proved fatal to a good many of my Westminster school-fellows, who, some of them because they were fit for the army, and others because they were fit for nothing else, took to that profession at the commencement of the revolutionary war. Rather a large proportion of them perished in the West Indies. “Who the devil would have thought of my burying old Blair!” was the exclamation of one who returned; and who of the two might better have been buried there himself. Blair was a cousin of the present Countess of Lonsdale, and I was as intimate with him as it was possible to be with one who boarded in another house: though it would not have been easy to have found a boy in the whole school more thoroughly unlike myself in everything, except in temper. He was, as Lord Lonsdale told me, a spoilt-child—idle, careless, fond of dogs and horses, of hunting rats, baiting badgers, and above all of driving stage-coaches. But there was a jovial hilarity, a perpetual flow of easy good spirits, a sunshine of good humour upon his countenance, and a merriment in his eye, which bring him often to my mind, and always make me think of him with a great deal of kindness. He was remarkably fat, and might have sat for the picture of Bacchus, or of Bacchus’s groom; but he was active withal.
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 153 |
Blair spent one summer holidays with his
mother Lady Mary, at Spa, and used to
amuse me greatly by his accounts of the place and the people, and the delight
of travelling abroad, but above all by his description of the French
postilions. He had brought back a postilion’s whip, having learnt to
crack it in perfection; and that French flogger, as he called it, did all his
exercises for him: for if Marsden, whom he had nominated
to the office of secretary for this department, ever demurred when his services
were required, crack went the French flogger, and the sound of what he never
felt produced prompt obedience. The said Marsden was a
person who could have poured out Latin verses, such as they were, with as much
facility as an Italian improvisatore performs his easier
task. I heard enough about Spa, at that time, to make me very desirous of
seeing the place; and when I went thither, after my first visit to the field of
Waterloo, it was more for the sake of poor Blair than for any other reason.
Poor fellow, the yellow fever made short work with his plethoric frame, when he
went with his regiment to the West Indies. The only station that he would
thoroughly have become, would have been that of abbot in some snug Benedictine
abbey, where the rule was comfortably relaxed; in such a station, where the
habit would just have imposed the restraint he needed, he would have made
monks, tenants, dependants, and guests all as happy as indulgence, easy
good-nature, and hearty hospitality could make them. As it was, flesh of a
better grain never went
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There was another person in the remove, who, when he
allowed himself time for such idle entertainment, was as fond of Blair’s conversation as I was (our
intercourse with him was only during school-hours), but to whom I was attached
by sympathies of a better kind. This was William
Bean, the son of an apothecary at Camberwell, from which place
he walked every day to school, a distance of more than three miles to and fro.
He had a little of the cockney pronunciation, for which
Blair used to laugh at him and mimic him; his
appearance was odd, as well as remarkable, and made the worse by his dress. One
day when he had gone into the boarding-house with me, Dickenson (the present member for
Somersetshire, a good-natured man) came into the room; and fixing his eyes upon
him, exclaimed with genuine surprise, “O you cursed quiz, what is your
name?” One Sunday afternoon, when with my two most intimate
associates (Combe and Lambe) I had been taking a long ramble on the
Surrey side of the river, we met Bean somewhere near the
Elephant and Castle returning home from a visit, in his Sunday’s suit of
dittos, and in a cocked-hat to boot. However contented he might have been in
this costume, I believe that, rather than have been seen in it by us, he would
have been glad if the earth had opened, and he could have gone down for five
minutes to Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. However, the next morning, when he threw
himself upon our mercy, and entreated that we would not say that we had
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 155 |
With this quizzical appearance, there were in Bean’s swarthy face, and in his dark eyes, the strongest indications of a clear intellect, a steady mind, and an excellent heart; all which he had in perfection. He had been placed at Westminster in the hope of his getting into college; but being a day scholar, and having no connections acquainted with the school, he had not been put in the way of doing this, so that when the time came for what is called standing out, while all the other candidates were in the usual manner crammed by their helps, Bean stood alone, without assistance, and consequently failed. Had the mode of examination been what it ought to be, a fair trial of capacity and diligence, in which no cramming was allowed, his success would have been certain; and had he gone off from Westminster to either University, he would most certainly have become one of the most distinguished men there; every thing might have been expected from him that could result from the best capacity and the best conduct. But he failed, and was immediately taken from school to learn his father’s profession. I had too sincere a regard for him to lose sight of him thus; and several times in summer afternoons, when the time allowed, walked to Camberwell Green just to see and shake hands with him, and hurry back. And this I continued to do as long as I remained at Westminster.
In 1797 or 1798, he stopped me one day in the street,
saying he did not wonder that I should have passed
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He had saved 5000l. or 6000l. which he left to his mother, an unhappy and unworthy
woman who had forsaken her family, but still retained a strong affection for
this eldest son; and wished, when he was a boy, to withdraw him from his
father. With
| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 157 |
Dr. Pinckland has mentioned him with respect in his notes on the West Indies, as one of the assistants in some military hospital in which the doctor was employed. I was pleased at meeting with this brief and incidental notice of his name while he was yet living, though with a melancholy feeling that the abler man was in the subordinate station. That brief notice is the only memorial of one, who, if he had not been thus miserably cut off, would probably have left some durable monument of himself: for during twenty years of service in all parts of the globe, he had seen much, and I have never known any man who would more certainly have seen all things in the right point of view, morally as well as intellectually. Had he returned I should have invited him hither, and he would have come; we should have met like men who had answered each other’s expectations, and whom years and various fortunes, instead of alienating, had drawn nearer in heart and in mind. That meeting will take place in a better world.
