True Manliness. Hughes Thomas

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Doctor paused for several seconds with a confident look. But no response came and he passed on, ‘and I was left lamenting.’ No one answered, and he had to remind us of the old Abbot, pottering away in his garden on the border, when Mary and her defeated followers ride up before Crossing, and the old monk leans on his spade and looks after them, saying, ‘I could pity this poor Queen and these Lords, but what are these things to a man of four score – and it’s a fine growing morning for the young kale-wort’ – and so goes to his spading again.

      “I cannot help to this day wondering at the patience and forbearance both of him and my tutor, Cotton, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, over my frightful copies of verses, and Greek and Latin prose. As I was head of the eleven at cricket, and of bigside at football, I naturally had but small leisure to devote to such matters, and consequently my copies were notorious for the number of picture frames they were certain to contain, – picture frames being the strong black marks which the Doctor used to make round bad, false concords MUNUS HOSPITALIS or quantities MUNERA STARE.

      “He used to do it slowly and grimly, his under lip seeming to grow out as the pen went deliberately round the wretched words, and one did not feel good during the operation. But as no boy enjoyed the sausage seller’s buffooneries, or Socrates’ banters more than I, (tho’ I made sad hashes in construing them) I remained in favor, tho’ incorrigible, till the end.

      “I carried away from Rugby dreadfully bad scholarship, but two invaluable possessions. First, a strong religious faith in and loyalty to Christ; and secondly, open mindedness. It was said (and is still said, I believe,) of Arnold, by way of censure, that to him everything was an open question every morning of his life. And though he never made any direct effort to unsettle any of our convictions that I can remember, we went out into the world the least hampered intellectually of any school of English boys of that time. To this day I am always ready to change an old opinion the moment I can get a better one, and so I think it has been with many of my old school-fellows, though we believed ourselves to be a thorough true blue school.

      “Perhaps I also owe to Rugby my strong democratic bias, but I don’t think it. I guess I was born so (or barn-zo, as Wessex chaw-bacon pronounced it in the famous story). As a little scrap in petticoats nothing pleased me so much as playing with the village children, and I could never understand why they shouldn’t have all the things I had. At any rate it was at Rugby that I first was able to indulge my radical propensities. Up to my time, the school-close (or playgrounds) was kept as sacred ground, no ‘lout’ (as we politely called the neighboring lieges) being allowed to set foot within the precincts, and I had often noticed the insolent airs with which casual intruders in fustian or corduroy had been extruded. So when I became head of the eleven (and so a sort of constitutional monarch in the close) I asked the best cricketers amongst the ‘louts’ to come in and practice with me on summer evenings, and got up matches with their club, to the great advantage, I still believe, of school as well as town.

      “I was dreadfully loath to leave, and when I was obliged, (as nineteen is the limit of ages) was much averse to going up to Oxford. I knew that my scholarship was too weak to allow me to take anything like high honors, and so, as my profession was to be the Bar, I wanted to go up to London at once and enter at an Inn of Court. My father, however, after consulting his legal friends, decided that I should go to Oxford, and accordingly I went up to his old College, Oriel, in February, 1842. My first year at Oxford was utterly wasted, except that I learned to pull a good oar, and perfected myself in boxing, which was then much in vogue, several prize-fighters being generally kept in pay by the under-graduates. The lectures were perfectly easy to me as I had read all the books at Rugby, and I employed no private tutor. I knew I couldn’t take high honors, (or at any rate choose to think so) and as I happened to fall into an idle, fast set, just did as the rest, and made a fool of myself in all the usual ways. But I never much enjoyed that kind of thing and got very sick of it by the time I had taken my little-go, and towards the end of my second year, just before I was of age, the most important event of my life happened, for in the long vacation I became engaged to my wife, then a schoolgirl, the great friend of my only sister. This pulled me up short. Our parents very properly said we were silly young people and must not see one another for years, or correspond, that we might see whether we really knew our minds. I went back to Oxford quite a new man, knocked off all not absolutely necessary expense, and lived decently and soberly for the rest of my time, taking my degree the first moment I could without coaching, by which I saved money. Consequently, with the help of a small legacy of £200, which came to me at twenty-one from an old great-aunt, I came away quite out of debt and with some small balance towards furnishing chambers in London, which was fairly creditable, as, there being three of us up at once, my father only allowed us £200 a year each. This was supposed to be too small for a fellow to live on!! Alas, it is even worse now, I fear!

      “I had the good luck to be under Clough (the poet) and Fraser, now Bishop of Manchester, who were Oriel tutors at that time, and the latter of whom is still one of my closest friends. I went up, as I have said, believing myself still a Tory, but left Oxford a Radical. Something of the change was owing to the insolence of undergraduate life at that day, but more to a tour I took with a pupil through the North in the long vacation of my third year. My pupil was the son of a neighboring Berkshire squire, and all his father wanted was that I should keep him out of mischief. If he could be interested or taught anything, so much the better. We happened to stop at a Commercial hotel in Lancashire on our way North, and in the bagman’s room I got into an argument with some of the North county travellers on the subject of the Corn Laws, then prominently before Parliament. On this first night I came speedily to the conclusion that I knew very little about the matter, and before I returned to Oxford for Michaelmas term I had become a good free-trader.

      “I was nearly twenty-two when I went up to London, straight from Oxford, to begin my legal career. My father kindly suggested that I should take a run on the Continent before settling down, to get up my French and German to the point at any rate of tolerably fluent small talk, and here again I have no doubt but he was right, as the want of early training of ear and tongue has left me a helpless mortal ever since. However, I was determined to lose not a month or a week if I could help it, and soon found myself in small rooms on the third floor at No. 15 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, from the windows of which, on a fine day, I could see the Surrey hills. I paid £30 a year for the chambers, and lived in them for another £70, keeping down my whole expenditure within £100 a year, a feat I am still rather proud of. I never could have done it but for a glorious old woman who kept the house, and did for all the inhabitants, of whom only two lived in their chambers. She had come up from Devonshire as a girl some fifty years before to that house where she had been ever since, and in all that time had never seen the Thames, which is, as you know, not five minutes’ walk from Lincoln’s Inn Fields; nor St. Paul’s, except the dome, from the top windows of No. 15. She still spoke with a delightful Devonshire accent, all her U’s being as soft as if she had left Torquay yesterday, and I won her heart at once by professing, or I should say acknowledging, a passion for junket, which she prepared in a reverent and enthusiastic manner on the slightest excuse. As my wife that was to be lived in Devonshire, the coincidence was peculiarly grateful to me, and the dear old woman, Roxworthy by name, could not have had my interests more at heart had I been her own son.

      “There I lived for two years and upwards pleasantly enough, for several old school and college friends had chambers in the neighborhood. My engagement was a constant stimulus to work and economy, and made me indifferent as to society. I just visited two or three family friends on Sundays, and for the rest did very well without it. From my own experience I would have every youngster get engaged by the time he is twenty-one, though I am not prepared to maintain that a long engagement is so good for girls as for boys. Mine at any rate was the making of me. My democratic instincts grew in strength during these years, notwithstanding the failure of my first practical endeavors to act up to them. One of these I will mention. Every house in the Square was entitled to a key of the five gardens, in which I spent most of the long summer evenings; and, seeing the number of ragged children who came round the railings and looked wistfully through at the lawns and beds within, I extended my privilege to them and used to let them in by the scores, СКАЧАТЬ