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Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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Perhaps the reader will think this incident hardly worth mentioning, but
to a lover of trees, avenues, and old houses, such as I confess myself
to be, it seems the very perfection of a vexatious incident. I cannot
imagine anything whatever, not entailing any serious consequences, that
would have tried my own temper more.

On my grandfather's death, the whole of his property went to his eldest
son. He had brought up all his three sons to be solicitors, not because
he had any peculiar enthusiasm for the legal profession, but simply as
the readiest means of earning a living. The sons themselves had no
natural affinity for the law; my eldest uncle heartily disliked it, the
other regarded it with cool indifference, and my father expressed his
desire that I should never be a lawyer, on the ground that a man had
enough to plague him in his own concerns without troubling his mind
about those of other people. One curious distinction may be noted here,
as the result probably of that intermingling with the every-day world,
which happens naturally in the career of provincial attorneys. Whilst my
aunts remained all their lives aristocratic in their feelings, and
rather liked to enjoy the hospitality of the great houses in the
neighborhood, my uncles, and my father also, abandoned all aristocratic
memories and aspirations, and entered frankly into the middle class.
Each of them did what was natural under the circumstances. Women are
generally more aristocratic than men, and cling more decidedly to their
class, and I think my aunts showed better taste in liking refined
society than my father did in lowering himself to associate with men of
an inferior stamp in rank, in manners, and in habits. I distinctly
remember how one of my aunts told me that somebody had made a remark on
her liking for great people, and the only comment she made was, that she
preferred gentlefolks because their manners were more agreeable. She was
not a worshipper of rank, but she liked the quiet, pleasant manners of
the aristocracy, which indeed were simply her own manners.

My childhood could not have been better cared for, even by my own
mother, than by these two excellent ladies. They gave me a beginning of
education, and they have told me since that I learned to read English
with the greatest facility, so that when I was sent to the Grammar
School at Burnley, at the early age of five and a half, the master
considered me so well forward that I was set at once to Latin. In those
days it was a part of the wisdom of our educators to make us learn Latin
out of a grammar written in that language, and I retain some
recollection of the perfectly useless mental fatigue and puzzlement that
I was made to undergo in learning abstract statements about grammatical
science that were written in a tongue which I could not possibly
understand. The idea of taking a child five and a half years old, and
making it learn a dead language by abstract rules, is of itself a great
error. The proper way to teach a child Latin is simply to give it a
vocabulary, including only the things that it can see or imagine, and a
few verbs to make little phrases. I had learned to read English so
easily that good hopes were entertained for the rest of my education,
but my progress in Latin was very slow, and the only result of my early
training was to give me a horror of everything printed in Latin, that I
did not overcome for many years.

There was another child-pupil rather older than I, and the head-master
of those days (Dr. Butler's predecessor), who had a rude disposition,
sometimes amused himself by putting me on one of his knees, and the
other little boy on the other knee, after which, by an adroit
simultaneous movement of the two legs, he suddenly brought our heads
into collision. I quite remember the sensation of being stunned on these
occasions, but am not aware that my Latin was any the better for it.

My recollection of those early years is extremely vague, and there is
little in them that could interest the reader. I was taken once or twice
a year to my father, and always disliked and dreaded those visits, as I
feared him greatly, and with good reason. On one of these visits, when
quite a child, I persuaded my father's groom to let me mount his
saddle-horse, which I remember as a gray animal of what seemed a
prodigious altitude. The man put me on the horse's back, and being
entirely destitute of common-sense or prudence, actually gave me a whip
and left the bridle to me. I applied the whip vigorously, and was very
soon thrown off and carried back to the house covered with blood,
happily without more serious consequences. Another little incident has
more of the comic element. My father employed a tailor for himself, and
told the man to make me a suit without entering into any particulars.
The tailor being thus left to his own wisdom, made a costume that was
the exact copy of a full-grown squire's dress on a small scale. It was
composed of a green cut-away coat, a yellow waistcoat, and green
trousers, the whole adorned with gilt buttons. The tailor dressed me,
and then, proud of his work, presented me to my father and the ladies.
If the tailor was proud, my pride and satisfaction were at least equal
to his, and we neither of us could in the least understand the roars of
laughter that my appearance provoked, whilst our feelings were deeply
wounded by my father's tyrannical decree that I was never to wear those
beautiful clothes at all. Even to this day I am capable of regretting
that suit, and certainly I often see children now whose costumes are at
least equally absurd.




CHAPTER IV.


1842.

A tour in Wales in 1842.--Extracts from my journal of this tour.--My
inborn love for beautiful materials.--Stay at Rhyl.--Anglesea and
Caernarvon.--Reasons for specially remembering this tour.

The pleasantest recollections I have of my father are connected with a
tour in Wales that he undertook with me and his eldest sister in the
summer of 1842. My aunt made me keep a journal of that tour, which I
still possess, and by its help those days come hack to me with a
vividness that is very astonishing to myself. Being accustomed to live
with grown-up people, and having no companions of my own age in the same
house (though I had cousins at Hollins and friends at school), I had
acquired a way of talking about things as older people talk, so that the
journal in question contains many observations that do not seem natural
for a child. The fact, no doubt, is that I listened to my father and
aunt, and then put down many of their remarks in my little history of
our tour; but I was very observant on my own account, and received very
strong impressions, especially from buildings, such as old castles and
cathedrals, and great houses, and I had a topographic habit of mind even
in childhood, which made every fresh locality interesting to me and
engraved it on my memory. Perhaps the reader may like to see a page of
the diary. It seems rather formal and elderly to be written by a child
eight years old, but it must be remembered that it was an exercise
written by my father's desire and to please him. Letters to my cousins
at the same date would have been more juvenile. Nevertheless, it was
perfectly natural for me then to use words employed by older people, and
the reader will remember that I had been learning Latin for more than
two years.

"On the road from Rhydland to Abergele we saw Hemmel Park, the seat of
Lord Dinorbin, lately burnt down. Near Rhydland is Penwarn, the seat of
Lord Mostyn; the house is small and unpretending, the grounds are
beautiful. There is a very handsome dog-kennel, in which are kept
forty-four couple of fine fox-hounds ready for work, besides old ones in
one kennel, and young ones in another: the dogs all in such good order
and kennels so perfectly clean. In one field were sixteen hunters
without shoes. Lord Mostyn does not live much at Penwarn, generally in
London. He is an old man, and at present an invalid. We had several
pleasant days' fishing in the Clwyd and Elway; a Mr. Graham at Rhyl has
permission to fish in Lord Mostyn's preserve, and he may take a friend,
which character Papa and I personated for the time.

"About eight miles from Rhyl is Trelacre, the seat of Sir Pyers Mostyn,
a very excellent modern building; the grounds are laid out with most
luxuriant taste, nothing is wanting to give effect to it as a whole. In
the woods opposite the house is a rich but rather formal distribution of
flower-beds; everything appeared to be in blossom. On an elevation is
placed the most ingeniously contrived Grotto; at every turn there is a
device of another character to the last, here a lion couchant, there the
head of Momus, a wild boar's head, a heron, a skeleton, &c., &c. In one
place were two old friars seated, each leaning on his stick, apparently
in earnest conversation; all these are roughly, but with great accuracy,
formed upon the numerous pillars which support a room or two above. The
last object you arrive at is a hermit as large as life seated in his
cell, with one book beside him and another on his knee, upon which his
left hand is placed; his right is laid across his breast. The pillars
are so contrived that the little cavern is light in every part; at the
entrance is an immense sea-dragon with large glaring eyes and a long red
tongue hanging half-way out. The monster had an effect somewhat
startling. Next above the grotto is a small room hewn out of the rock,
with sofas and pillows on each side the fireplace hewn out of the same
rock. In the centre is a stone table, upon which were some beautiful
antique bowls, cups, &c. The door to this apartment is a great
curiosity, being made to appear as if of rock; we did not think at first
that it was a real door. Over this room is another, the residence of a
lame woman, who showed us upon the leads above her dwelling a very
extensive prospect; amongst the objects was the mouth of the river Dee.
She afterwards [took us] to a moss house, and several other nice points
in the garden. The walks are covered with the material left in washing
the lead ore, through which no weed can even peep. It is many-colored,
and the glittering of here and there a bit of ore, lead, or silver, has
a very pretty effect indeed."

The reader will have had enough of the journal by this time. Its only
merit is the accurate noting down of details that I had seen; but many
of the details are such as children of that age do not commonly pay
attention to, as, for instance, in this bit about an old church:--

"The church at Dyserth has an east window which is considered the
greatest antiquity in Wales; many figures of the saints are represented
in colored glass, the lead betwixt the panes is the breadth of two
fingers. The yard has several old trees--two very fine yews, and
certainly the largest birch for miles round."

I notice a great interest in all beautiful materials throughout the
pages of this journal; the kind of wood used for the suites of furniture
is invariably mentioned, as, for example, the chairs of solid ebony in
the dining-room at Penrhyn Castle, the old oak in the dining-room at
Trelacre, and the light oak in the drawing-room, the carved oak ceilings
and pillars at Penrhyn, and the use of stone from St. Helen's there, as
well as the bedstead that is made of slate, and the enormous table of
the same material in the servants' hall. The interest in materials is a
special instinct, a kind of sympathy with Nature showing itself by
appreciation of the different qualities of her products. This instinct
has always been very strong in me, and I have often noticed it in
others, especially in artists. Some poets are very fond of describing
beautiful materials; but the instinct is not confined to poetical or
artistic natures, being often found amongst workmen in the handicrafts,
and it may be associated with a sense of the usefulness of materials, as
well as with admiration of their beauty. With me the interest in them is
both artistic and utilitarian; all metals, woods, marble, etc., are
delightful to me in some way.

In 1842 Rhyl was a little quiet place known to the Liverpool people as a
good bathing-place, but not spoiled by formal rows of houses and big
hotels. There was at that time in Rhyl a gentleman who possessed a sort
of genteel cottage in a relatively large garden, and though the house
was small, it might have done for a widower like my father, and it was
for sale. I remember urging my father to buy it, as Rhyl pleased me on
account of the possibilities of boating and riding on the sands, besides
which we had enjoyed some excellent fishing, which delighted me as a
child, though I gave up the amusement afterwards. I mention the house
here for a particular reason. It has remained very distinctly in my
memory ever since, as my father's last chance of escape from his habits
and associates. Whilst we were in Wales together he conducted himself as
a man ought to do who is travelling with a lady and a child. He was not
harsh with me, and notwithstanding my habitual fear of him, some of my
Welsh days with him are pleasant to live over again in memory. Now, if
he had bought that house, the sort of life we were then leading might
have become habitual, and he might possibly have been saved from the sad
fate that awaited him. However, though tempted for a moment, he refused
because it did not seem a good investment, being a flimsy little
building, not very well contrived.

Though my father would not buy the house to please me, he bought me a
little bay mare at Rhyl that was a pretty and swift creature, and we
took her on the steamer to Menai, where, for want of a convenient
arrangement for landing horses, she was pitched into the sea and made to
swim ashore. She had been in a hot place on the steamer, near the
engines, and the sudden change to the cold sea-water was probably (so we
thought afterwards) the reason why she became broken-winded, which was a
great grief to me. I hardly know why I record these trifles, but they
have an importance in the feelings of a boy, and I am weak enough to
have very tender feelings about animals down to the present day.

We visited Anglesea and Caernarvon, and other places too well known for
the reader to tolerate a description of them here. In those days the
tubular bridge had not yet been thought of; but the beautiful suspension
bridge at Menai was already in existence, and was the most remarkable
bridge then existing in the world. I was more struck by the beauty of
the structure than by its costliness or size; the journal says, "It is
indeed wonderfully beautiful." On one of our excursions we saw what in
rainy weather is a good waterfall, and I find a reference to this that I
quote for the curious bit of Welsh-English that is included in it,--"We
came to a little village, which has in a wet season a very fine
waterfall; the driver said it would not be seen to advantage because
there was 'few water.' There certainly was 'few water,' but the fine
high rocks gave a powerful idea of what it would have been had the
rushing of waters taken the place of the death-like stillness which then
prevailed."

The reader will perhaps pardon me for having dwelt longer on this Welsh
tour than the interest of it may seem to warrant; but I look back to it
with lingering regret as the last agreeable association connected with
the memory of my father. It was a most happy little tour. I had an
intensely strong affection for my father's eldest sister Mary, who
accompanied us, and whose dear handwriting I recognize in a few
corrections in the journal. Besides, that year 1842 is absolutely the
last year of my life in which I could live in happy ignorance of evil
and retain all the buoyancy of early boyhood. A terrible experience was
in reserve for me that soon aged me rapidly, and made a really merry
boyish life impossible for me after having passed through it.




CHAPTER V.


1843-1844.

A painful chapter to write.--My father calls me home.--What kind of a
house it was.--Paternal education and discipline.--My life at that time
one of dulness varied by dread.

The writing of this chapter is so painful to me that the necessity for
it has made me put off the composition of this autobiography year after
year. Then why not omit the chapter altogether? The omission is
impossible, because the events of the year 1843-1844 were quite the most
important of my early boyhood, and have had a most powerful and in some
respects a disastrous influence over my whole life.

Notwithstanding my father's kindness to me during our Welsh tour, my
feelings towards him were not, and could not be, those of trust and
confidence. He was extremely severe at times, often much more so than
the occasion warranted, this being partly natural in a strong
authoritative man, and partly the result of irritability brought on by
his habit of drinking. When inflamed with brandy he became positively
dangerous, and I had a well-founded dread of his presence. At all times
he was very uncertain--he might greet me with a kind word or he might be
harsh or silent, just as it happened. During my visits to him at Shaw,
one of my two aunts invariably accompanied me and stayed as long as I
stayed, which was a great protection for me. The idea of being left
alone with my father, even for a day, was enough to fill me with
apprehension; however, it did not seem likely that I should have to live
with him, as I should probably be sent to some distant school, and only
come home for the holidays.

This was the view of my future that was taken by my aunts and myself,
when one day in the year 1843, I believe in the month of June, there
came a letter from my father peremptorily declaring, in terms which
admitted of no discussion, that although a child might live with ladies
it was not good for a boy, and that he had determined to have me for the
future under his own roof. The news came upon me like a thunderclap in a
clear sky. I had grateful and affectionate feelings towards both my
aunts, but to the elder my feelings were those of a son, and a very
loving son, towards his mother. She had, in fact, taken the place of my
mother so completely that I remained unconscious of my loss. I reserve
for a pleasanter chapter than this the delightful duty of painting her
portrait; at present it is enough to say that a separation from her in
childhood was the most bitter grief that could be experienced by me, and
my father's ukase made this separation seem destined to be eternal,
except perhaps a short visit in the holidays. In a word, my filial life
with her seemed at an end.

I was taken to my father's and left alone with him. Some years before,
he had bought a house in Shaw called Ivy Cottage,--a house with a front
of painted stucco, looking on a garden,--and though the gable end of the
house looked on a street, the other end had a view over some fields, not
then built over. My father rented one or two of these fields for his
horses and cows, and some farm buildings just big enough for his small
establishment. He did not keep a carriage, and had even given up his
dogcart, but he always had a saddle-horse for himself and a pony for me;
at one time I had two ponies. His horses were his only luxury, but he
was as exacting about them as if he had been a rich nobleman. He would
not tolerate careless grooming for an instant; bits and stirrups were
always kept in a state of exemplary brightness, and when he rode through
Shaw he was quite fit to be seen in Hyde Park. At that time he had a
jet-black mare of a vicious temper, which only gratified his pride as a
horseman, and it so happened (I am not inventing this for a contrast)
that my pony was of the purest white with full mane and tail of the
same, and shaped exactly like the sturdy war-horses in old pictures. As
he was still a fine-looking, handsome man and I was a healthy boy, no
doubt we looked well enough, and it is probable that many a poor factory
lad envied me my good luck in being able to ride about in that way,
instead of working in a mill; but I rode in constant dread of my
father's heavy hunting-whip. It had a steel hammer at the end of the
long handle, and if at any time its owner fancied that I was turning my
toes out, he did not say anything, but with a dexterity acquired by
practice he delivered a sharp blow with that hammer on my foot which
made me writhe with pain. Nothing vexed him more than any appearance of
gentleness or tenderness. I loved my pony, Lily, and did not like to
beat her when she was doing her best, and she had hard work to keep up
with my father's ill-tempered mare, so he would say, "D--n it, can't you
whip her? Can't you whip better than that? The strokes of that whip of
yours are so feeble that they wouldn't kill a fly!" Nobody could say
that of _his_ hitting. I had a little young dog that was very dear to
me, and when it pleased my father one day to walk into the kitchen, it
unluckily so happened that the dog was, or seemed to be, in his way, so
he gave it a kick that sent it into the middle of the room, and there it
lay quivering. He took no notice of it, said what he had to say, in his
usual peremptory tone, and then left the room. I knelt down by the poor
little dog, which was in its death-agony, and shortly breathed its last.

During our rides my dreaded companion would stop at many inns and
private houses, where he slaked his perpetual thirst in stirrup-cups, or
sometimes he would go in and sit for a long time whilst the horses were
cared for by some groom. The effects of these refreshments could not
fail to be evident as we returned home; and it was more by good luck
than anything else, except his habitually excellent horsemanship, that
he was able to ride at all in that condition. I clearly remember one
particular occasion when he seemed to be keeping his seat with more than
usual uncertainty, and at last fairly rolled out of it. We were riding
along a paved street, so that the fall would have been very serious; but
two or three men who were watching him foresaw the accident just in
time, and rushed forward to catch him as he fell. On another occasion
when I was not present (indeed this happened before my settled residence
with my father) he fell in a most dangerous way, with his foot caught in
the stirrup, and was dragged violently down a steep hill till the horse
was brought to a stand. Fortunately my father wore a top-coat at the
time, which was soon torn off his back by the friction, and so were his
other clothes, and the back itself was almost flayed; but the doctor
said that if he had been lightly dressed the accident would have been far
more serious.

My father would sometimes send me on errands to a considerable distance
with the pony, and as he hated all dawdling and loitering in others,
though he had become a perfectly undisciplined man himself, he would
limit me strictly to the time necessary for my journey, a time that I
never ventured to exceed. In some respects the education that he was
giving me, though of Spartan severity, was not ill calculated for the
formation of a manly character. He quite understood the importance of
applying the mind completely to the thing which occupied it for the
moment. If he saw me taking several books together that had no
connection with each other, he would say, "Take one of those books and
read it steadily, don't potter and play with half-a-dozen."

Desultory effort irritated him, and he was quick to detect busy idleness
under its various disguises. He swore very freely himself, and as I
heard so many oaths I was beginning to acquire the same accomplishment,
when he overheard me accidentally and gave me such a stern lecture on
the subject that I knew ever after I was not to follow the paternal
example. What his soul hated most, however, was a lie or the shadow of a
lie. He could not tolerate the little fibs that are common with women
and children, and are often their only protection against despotism.
"Tell the truth and shame the devil" was one of his favorite precepts,
though why the devil should feel ashamed because I spoke the truth was
never perfectly clear to my childish intellect. However, the precept
sank deep into my nature, and got mixed up with a feeling of
self-respect, so that it became really difficult for me to tell fibs. I
remember on one occasion being a martyr for truth in peculiarly trying
circumstances. It was before I lived permanently under the paternal
roof, and on one of those visits we paid to my father. An aunt was with
me (not the one who accompanied us to Wales), and she was often rather
hard and severe. My father had made a law that I was to practise with
dumb-bells a quarter of an hour every morning, and this exercise was
taken in the garden, but before beginning I always looked at the clock
which was in the sitting-room. On coming back into the house one
morning, I met my father, who said, "Have you done your fifteen
minutes?" "Yes, papa." "That is not true," said my aunt from the next
room, "he has only practised for ten minutes; look at the clock!" My
terrible master looked at the clock; the finger stood at ten minutes
after eleven, and this was taken as conclusive evidence against me. I
simply answered (what was true) that I had begun five minutes before the
hour. This "additional lie" put my father into a fury, and he ordered me
to do punishment drill with those dumb-bells for two hours without
stopping. Of those hundred and twenty minutes he did not remit one. Long
before their expiration I was ready to drop, but he came frequently to
show that he had his eye upon me, and the horrible machine-like motion
must continue. On other occasions I got punished for lying, when my only
fault was the common childish inability to explain. "Why did you tear
that piece of paper?" "Please, papa, I did not tear it; _I pulled it,
and it tore_." Here is a child attempting to explain that he had not
torn a piece of paper voluntarily, that he had stretched it only, and
had himself been surprised by the tearing. In my father's code that was
a "confounded lie," and I was to be severely punished for it.

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