Memoir of a Brother. Thomas Smart Hughes

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СКАЧАТЬ For the first part of my time there, in college, we lived in the same rooms, always on the same staircase; and afterwards in the same lodgings. From that time to the day of his death we lived in the most constant intimacy and affection. Looking back over all those years, I can call to mind no single unkind, or unworthy, or untruthful, act or word of his; and amongst all the good influences for which I have to be thankful, I reckon the constant presence and example of his brave, generous, and manly life as one of the most powerful and ennobling. If I can in any measure reproduce it for you, I know that I shall be doing you a good service; and helping you, in even more difficult times than those in which we grew up, to quit yourselves as brave and true English boys and Englishmen, in whatever work or station God may be pleased to call you to.

      You have all been taught to look to one life as your model, and to turn to Him who lived it on our earth, as to the guide, and friend, and helper, who alone can strengthen the feeble knees, and lift up the fainting heart. Just in so far as you cleave to that teaching, and follow that life, will you live your own faithfully. If I were not sure that what I am going to try to do for you would help to turn you more trustfully and lovingly to that source of all truth, all strength, all light, be sure I would not have undertaken it. As it is, I know it will be my fault if it does not do this.

      THOMAS HUGHES.

MEMOIR OF A BROTHER.

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I.

       FIRST YEARS.

       Table of Contents

      My brother was born on the 18th of September, 1821 at Uffington, in Berkshire, of which your great-grandfather was vicar. Uffington was then a very primitive village, far away from any high road, and seven miles from Wantage, the nearest town from which a coach ran to London. There were very few neighbours, the roads were almost impassable for carriages in the winter, and the living was a poor one; but your great-grandfather (who was a Canon of St. Paul’s) had exchanged a much richer living for it, because his wife had been born there, and was deeply attached to the place. Three George Watts’s had been vicars of Uffington, in direct succession from father to son, and she was the daughter of the last of them. So your grandfather, who was their only child, came to live in the village on his marriage, in an old farmhouse close to the church, to which your grandfather added some rooms, so as to make it habitable. If you should ever make a pilgrimage to the place, you will not find the house, for it has been pulled down; but the grand old church is there, and White Horse Hill, rising just behind the village, just as they were half a century ago, when we first looked at them. We could see the church from our bed-room window, and the hill from our nursery, a queer upper room amongst the rafters, at the top of the old part of the house, with a dark closet in one corner, into which the nurses used to put us when we were more unruly than usual. Here we lived till your great-grandfather’s death, thirteen years later, when your grandfather removed to his house at Donnington.

      The memories of our early childhood and boyhood throng upon me, so that I scarcely know where to begin, or what to leave out. I cannot, however, I am sure, go wrong in telling you, how I became first aware of a great difference between us, and of the effect the discovery had on me. In the spring of 1828, when he was seven and I six years old, our father and mother were away from home for a few days. We were, playing together in the garden, when the footman came up to us, the old single-barrelled gun over his shoulder which the gardener had for driving away birds from the strawberries, and asked us whether we shouldn’t like to go rook-shooting. We jumped at the offer, and trotted along by his side to the rookery, some 300 yards from the house. As we came up we saw a small group of our friends under the trees—the groom, the village schoolmaster, and a farmer or two—and started forwards to greet them. Just before we got to the trees, some of them began firing up at the young rooks. I remember, even now, the sudden sense of startled fear which came over me. My brother ran in at once under the trees, and was soon carrying about the powder-horn from one to another of the shooters. I tried to force myself to go up, but could not manage it. Presently he ran out to me, to get me to go back with him, but in vain. I could not overcome my first impression, and kept hovering round, at a distance of thirty or forty yards, until it was time for us to go back; ashamed of myself, and wondering in my small mind why it was that he could go in amongst that horrible flashing and smoke, and the din of firing, and cawing rooks, and falling birds, and I could not.

      I had encountered the same puzzle in other ways already. Some time before my father had bought a small Shetland pony for us, Moggy by name, upon which we were to complete our own education in riding. We had already mastered the rudiments, under the care of our grandfather’s coachman. He had been in our family thirty years, and we were as fond of him as if he had been a relation. He had taught us to sit up and hold the bridle, while he led a quiet old cob up and down with a leading rein. But, now that Moggy was come, we were to make quite a new step in horsemanship. Our parents had a theory that boys must teach themselves, and that a saddle (except for propriety, when we rode to a neighbour’s house to carry a message, or had to appear otherwise in public) was a hindrance rather than a help. So, after our morning’s lessons, the coachman used to take us to the paddock in which Moggy lived, put her bridle on, and leave us to our own devices. I could see that that moment was, from the first, one of keen enjoyment to my brother. He would scramble up on her back, while she went on grazing—without caring to bring her to the elm stool in the corner of the field, which was our mounting place—pull her head up, kick his heels into her sides, and go scampering away round the paddock with the keenest delight. He was Moggy’s master from the first day, though she not unfrequently managed to get rid of him by sharp turns, or stopping dead short in her gallop. She knew it quite well; and, just as well, that she was mistress as soon as I was on her back. For weeks it never came to my turn without my wishing myself anywhere else. George would give me a lift up, and start her. She would trot a few yards, and then begin grazing, notwithstanding my timid expostulations, and gentle pullings at her bridle. Then he would run up, and pull up her head, and start her again, and she would bolt off with a flirt of her head, and never be content till I was safely on the grass. The moment that was effected she took to grazing again, and I believe enjoyed the whole performance as much as George, and certainly far more than I did. We always brought her a carrot, or bit of sugar, in our pockets, and she was much more like a great good-tempered dog with us than a pony.

      Our first hunting experience now came off. Some staghounds—the King’s, if I remember rightly—came down for a day or two’s sport in our part of Berkshire, and a deer was to be turned out on the downs, a few miles from our house. Accordingly the coachman was to take us both. I was to go before him on one of the carriage horses, made safe by leather strap which encircled us both, while George rode Moggy. He was anxious to go unattached, but on the whole it was considered better that the coachman should hold a leading rein, as no one knew how Moggy might behave with the dogs, and no one but I knew how completely she would have to do as he chose. We arrived safely at the meet, saw the deer uncarted, the hounds laid on, and lumbered slowly after, till they swept away over a rise in the downs, and we saw them no more. So, after riding about for some time, the coachman produced some bread and cheese from his pocket, and we dismounted, and hitched up horse and pony on the leeward side of an old barn. We had not finished our lunch, when suddenly, to our intense delight, the stag cantered by within twenty yards of us, and, by the time we were on horseback again, the hunt followed. This time George and Moggy made the most desperate efforts for freedom, but the coachman managed to keep them in tow, and so the hunt went away from us again. I believe it was in consequence of George’s remonstrances when he got home that it was now settled he should be allowed to go to the next meet of the foxhounds in our neighbourhood without a leading rein. This is his account of that great event, in a letter to his grandmother, almost the first he ever wrote. Those of you who have been brought up in the country will see how respectfully he always treats СКАЧАТЬ