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Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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His system of education included riding as an essential part, and that
he taught me well, so far as a child of that age could learn it. But
though there were harriers within a few miles he could not take me to
hunt, as children are sometimes taken in easier countries, the fields in
Lancashire being so frequently divided by stone walls. The nature of our
neighborhood equally prevented him from teaching me to swim, which he
would otherwise have done, as there were no streams deep enough, or left
in their natural purity. To accustom me to water, however, he made me
take cold shower-baths, certainly the best substitute for a plunge that
can be had in an ordinary room. In mental education he attached great
importance to common things, to arithmetic, for example, and to good
reading aloud, and intelligible writing. His own education had been very
limited; he knew no modern language but his own, and I believe he knew
no Greek whatever, and only just enough Latin for a solicitor, which in
those days was not very much; but if he was a Philistine in neglecting
his own culture, he had not the real Philistine's contempt for culture
in others and desired to have me well taught; yet there was nobody near
at hand to continue my higher education properly, and I was likely, had
we lived long together at Shaw, to become like the regular middle-class
Englishmen of those days, who from sheer want of preliminary training
were impervious to the best influences of literature and art. I might
have written a clear business letter, and calculated interest
accurately.

To accustom me to money matters, child as I was, my father placed gold
and silver in my keeping, and whatever I spent was to be accounted for.
In this way money was not to be an imaginary thing for me, but a real
thing, and I was not to lose the control of myself because I had my
pocket full of sovereigns. This was a very original scheme in its
application to so young a child, but it perfectly succeeded, and I never
either lost or misapplied one halfpenny of the sums my father entrusted
to my keeping. He was evidently pleased with his success in this.

There was a village school near his house kept by a respectable man for
children of both sexes, and there I was sent to practise calligraphy and
arithmetic. During school-hours there was at least complete relief from
the paternal supervision, and besides this I managed to fall in love
with a girl about a year older than myself, who was a very nice girl
indeed, though she squinted to an unfortunate degree. That is the great
advantage of having the young of both sexes in the same schoolroom,--the
manners of the brutal sex may be made tender by the presence of the
refined one. Boys and girls both went to the Grammar School at Burnley,
in the now forgotten days when Mr. Raws was head-master there; but that
was long before my time.

My existence at Ivy Cottage was one of extreme dulness varied by dread.
Every meal was a _tête-à-tête_ with my father, unrelieved by the
presence of any lady or young person, and he became more and more gloomy
as his nervous system gradually gave way, so that after having been
simply stern and unbending, he was now like a black cloud always hanging
over me and ready, as it seemed, to be my destruction in some way or
other not yet clearly defined. It was an immense relief to me when a
guest came to dinner, and I remember being once very much interested in
a gentleman who sat opposite me at table, for the simple reason that I
believed him to be the Duke of Wellington. There was rather more fuss
than usual in the way of preparation, and my father treated his guest
with marked deference, besides which the stranger had the Wellingtonian
nose, so my youthful mind was soon made up on the subject, and I
listened eagerly in the hope that the hero of Waterloo would fight some
of his battles over again. He remained, however, silent on that subject,
and I afterwards had the disappointment of learning that our guest was
not the Duke, but only the holder of a high office in the county.




CHAPTER VI.


1844.

My extreme loneliness.--Thoughts of flight.--My father's last illness
and death.--Circumstances of my last interview with him.--His funeral.

It was one of the effects of the constant anxiety and excitement, and
the dreadful wretchedness of that time, that my brain received the
images of all surrounding creatures and things with an unnatural
clearness and intensity, and that they were impressed upon it for life.
Even now everything about Ivy Cottage is as clear as if the forty years
were only as many days, and the writing of these chapters brings
everything before me most vividly, not only the faces of the people and
the habits and motions of the animals, but even the furniture, of which
I remember every detail, down to the coloring of the services in the
bedrooms, and the paint on my father's rocking-chair. An anecdote has
been told in these pages about exercise with dumb-bells and an appeal to
the clock. In writing that, I saw the real clock with the moon on its
face (for it showed the phases of the moon), and my aunt standing near
the window with her work in her hand and glancing up from the work to
the clock, just as she did in reality.

Amongst other particular occasions I remember one night when the moon
shone very brightly in the garden, and I was sitting near my bedroom
window looking over it, meditating flight. My father's cruelty had then
reached its highest point. I was always spoken to harshly when he
condescended to take any notice of me at all, and was very frequently
beaten. Our meals together had become perfectly intolerable. He would
sit and trifle with his cutlet, and cover it with pepper, for his
appetite was completely gone, and there was no conversation except
perhaps an occasional expression of displeasure. The continual tension
caused by anxiety made my sleep broken and uncertain, and that night I
sat up alone in the bedroom longer than usual and looking down upon the
moonlit garden. There was an octagonal summer-house of trellis-work on
the formal oblong lawn, and on the top of it was a large hollow ball of
sheet-copper painted green that had cost my grandmother three pounds. It
is oddly associated with my anxieties on that night, because I looked
first at it and then at the moon alternately whilst thinking. The
situation had become absolutely intolerable, the servants were my only
protectors, and though devoted they never dared to interfere when their
master was actually beating me. I therefore seriously weighed, in my own
childish manner, the possibilities of a secret flight. The moonlight was
tempting--it would be easy to go alone to the stable and saddle the
pony. On a fine night I could be many miles away before morning. There
was no difficulty whatever about money; I had plenty of sovereigns in a
drawer to be accounted for afterwards to my father, and meanwhile could
employ them in escaping from him. Still, I knew that such an employment
of _his_ money would be looked upon by him as a breach of trust, and
would, in fact, _be_ a breach of trust. This consideration was not
easily set aside, though I now see that it was needlessly scrupulous,
and have no doubt whatever that if a child is left by the ignorance or
the carelessness of superior authority in the hands of a madman, it has
a clear right to provide for its own safety by any means in its power.

But where was I to go? My uncles were two very cool lawyers, always on
the side of authority, and they would not be likely to believe my story
entirely. A vague but sure instinct warned me that they would set me
down for a rebellious boy who wanted to escape from justly severe
paternal authority, and that they would at once send me back to Ivy
Cottage. One of my two maiden aunts would be very likely to take the
same view, but if the other received me with kindness, she could not
have strength to resist my father, who would send or go to her at once
and claim me. After thinking over all these things, I came to the
conclusion that real safety was only to be found amongst strangers, and
it seemed so hazardous to ask protection from unknown people that I
decided to remain; but a very little would have settled it the other
way. If those sovereigns had been really my own, I should probably have
crept out of the house, saddled the pony, and ridden many miles; but so
young a boy travelling alone would have been sure to attract attention,
and the attempt to win deliverance would have been a failure. In after
years, one of my elder relatives said that the attempt would almost
certainly have caused my father to disinherit me by a new will, as my
mother's property had been left to him absolutely. This danger was quite
of a serious kind (more serious than the reader will think probable from
what I choose to say in this place), as my father had another heir in
view whom I never saw, but who was held _in terrorem_ over me.

I awoke one bleak winter's morning about five o'clock, and heard the
strangest cries proceeding from his room. His manservant had been
awakened before me and had gone to the room already, where he was
engaged in a sort of wrestling match with my father, who, in the belief
that the house was full of enemies, was endeavoring to throw himself out
of the window. Other men had been called for, who speedily arrived, and
they overpowered him, though even the remnant of his mighty strength was
such that it took six men to hold him on his bed. The attack lasted a
whole week, and the house would have been a perfect hell, had not a
certain event turned it for me into a Paradise.

I had not been able somehow to get to sleep late at night for a short
time, when a light in the room awoke me. The horrible life I had been
leading for many a day and night had produced a great impressionability,
and I was particularly afraid of my father in the night-time, so I
started up in bed with the idea that he was come to beat me, when lo!
instead of his terrible face, I saw what for me was the sweetest and
dearest face in the whole world! It was his sister Mary, she who had
taken my mother's place, and whom I loved with a mingled sentiment of
filial tenderness and gratitude that remained undiminished in force,
though it may have altered in character, during all the after years. For
the suddenness of revulsion from horror to happiness, there has never
been a minute in my existence comparable to the minute when I realized
the idea that she had come. At first it seemed only a deceptive dream.
Such happiness was incredible, and I did not even know she had been sent
for; but the sweet reality entered into my heart like sunshine, and
throwing my arms about her neck I burst into a passion of tears. She, in
her quiet way, for she hardly ever yielded to a strong emotion, though
her feelings were deep and tender, looked at me sadly and kindly and
told me to sleep in peace, as she was going to remain in the house some
time. Then she left the room, and I lay in the darkness, but with a new
light brighter than sunshine in the hope that the miserable life with my
father had at length come to an end. It had only been six months in all,
but it had seemed longer than any half-dozen years gone through before
or after.

If this book were a novel, a very effective chapter might be written to
describe my father's sufferings during his week of delirium, and all the
dreadful fancies by which his disordered brain was oppressed and
tortured; but I prefer to skip that week altogether, and come to a
morning when his recovery was thought to be assured. He was no longer
delirious, but apparently quite calm, though his manner was hard and
imperious. He ordered me to be sent up to him, and I went almost
trembling with the old dread of him, and with a wretched feeling that
after my single week of respite the tyranny was to begin again. Such may
have been the feelings of an escaped slave when he has been caught and
brought back in irons, and stands once more in his master's presence. I
tried to congratulate my master on his recovery in a clumsy childish
way, but he peremptorily ordered me to fetch the "Times" and read to
him. I began, as usual, one of the leading articles on the politics of
the day, and before I had read many sentences my hearer declared that I
was reading badly and made the article nonsense. Why had I put in such
and such words of my own? he asked. His own precept that I was always to
tell the truth under any circumstances had habituated me to be truthful
even to him, so I answered boldly that I had not inserted the words
attributed to me. Then I read a little farther, and he accused me of
inserting something else that was not and could not be in the text; I
said it was he who was mistaken, and he flew into an uncontrollable
fury, one of those rages in which it had been his custom to punish me
without mercy. What he might have done to me I cannot tell; he raised
himself in bed and glared at me with an expression never to be
forgotten. My aunt, however, had been listening at the door, thinking it
probable that I should be in danger, and she now opened it and told me
to come away. I have a confused recollection of reaching the door under
a parting volley of imprecations.

It was a mistake to let my father see me, as, in the perverted state of
his mind, the mere sight of me was enough to make him furious. Whether
he hated me or not, nobody knows; but he treated me as if I was the most
odious little object that could be brought before his eyes. Very soon
after the scene about the article in the "Times," and probably in
consequence of the excitement brought on by it, my father had a fit of
apoplexy, and lingered till the next morning about nine o'clock. I was
not in the room when he died, but my aunt took me to see him immediately
after, and then I received an impression which has lasted to the present
day. The corpse was lying on its side amidst disordered bedclothes, and
to this day I can never go into a bedroom where the bed has not been
made without feeling as if there were a corpse in it. That dreadful
childish sensation received when I saw my father's body just as it lay
at the close of the death-agony, can even now be revived by the sight of
a disordered bed; such is the force of early impressions, especially
when they are received by a nervous system that has been overwrought by
the extreme of mental wretchedness.

The reader will hardly believe that the death of so hard a father could
have been felt otherwise than as an inexpressible relief, and yet I was
deeply affected by his loss. The kindest of fathers could hardly have
been wept for more. My aunt's tears were more explicable; she was old
enough to understand the frightful waste of the best gifts involved in
that premature ending; as for my grief, perhaps the true explanation of
it may be that I mourned rather the father who had been kind to me in
Wales, than the cruel master at Ivy Cottage.

I sometimes try to imagine what he might have been under more favorable
circumstances. There were times after his wife's death when he meditated
a complete change of residence, which might have saved him. He would
always have been severe and authoritative, but without alcohol he would
probably not have been cruel.

I remember the day of the funeral quite distinctly. My father's two
brothers came, though he had had scarcely any intercourse with them for
years. They were most respectable men, quite free from my father's
errors; but they had not half his life and energy. Such was the strength
of his constitution that so recently as the time of our journey in Wales
his health was not visibly impaired, and at the time of his death he had
that rare possession for a man of thirty-nine, a complete set of
perfectly sound teeth.

His coffin was carried on the shoulders of six men from Ivy Cottage to
the graveyard near the chapel. Shaw at that time had only a chapel, a
hideous building on a bleak piece of rising ground, surrounded by many
graves. It never looked more dreary than on that wretched January day in
1844, when we stood round as the sexton threw earth on my father's
coffin. He was laid in the same tomb with the poor young wife who had
loved him truly, and to whom he had been a tender and devoted husband
whilst their short union lasted.

I am the only survivor of that day's ceremony. The little procession has
all followed my father into the darkness, descending one by one into
graves separated by great spaces of land and sea. And when this is
printed I, too, shall be asleep in mine.




CHAPTER VII.


1845.

Dislike to Shaw in consequence of the dreadful life I led there with my
father.--My guardian.--Her plan for my education.--Doncaster
School.--Mr. Cape and his usher.--The usher's intolerance of Dissenters.
--My feeling for architecture and music.--The drawing-master.--My
guardian insists on my learning French.--Our French master, Sig.
Testa.--A painful incident.--I begin to learn the violin.--Dancing.--My
aversion to cricket.--Early readings.--Love of Scott.--My first
library.--Classical studies.

One consequence of the horrible life I had led at Ivy Cottage was a
permanent dislike to the place and the neighborhood, the evil effects of
which will be seen in the sequel. For the present it is enough to say
that I never went there again quite willingly. After my father's death
my grandmother lived in the village, and I was taken to see her every
year until her death; but though she was a very kind old lady, it was a
trial to me to visit her. I used to lie awake in her house at nights,
realizing those horrible nights I had passed at Ivy Cottage, with such
extreme intensity that it seemed as if my father might enter the room at
any time. This was not a superstitious dread of apparitions; but the
association of ideas brought back the past with a clearness that was
extremely painful. Even now, at a distance of more than forty years, I
avoid whatever reminds me of that time, and am not sorry that this
narrative now leads to something else.

My father had no great affection for his brothers, who on their part
could not have much esteem for him, so there was a mutual coolness which
prevented him from appointing either of them to be my guardian. Probably
they felt this as a slight, for, although always kind to me, they held
completely aloof from anything like paternal interference with my
education. My father had named his eldest sister, Mary, as my sole
guardian, with, two lawyers as co-executors with her. The reader will
probably think it was a mistake to appoint an old maid to be guardian to
a boy; but my aunt was a woman of excellent sense, and certainly not
disposed to bring me up effeminately; indeed, her willingness to
encourage me in everything manly was such that she would always inflict
upon herself considerable anxiety about my safety rather than prevent me
from taking my full share of the more or less perilous exercises of
youth. As to my education and profession her scheme was very simple and
clear, and would have been perfectly rational if I had been all that she
wished me to be. According to her plan I was to go to good schools
first, and then be prepared for Oxford by tutors, and become a
clergyman. There was some thought at one time of sending me to one of
the great public schools; but this was abandoned, and I was first sent
to Burnley School again, and then, after the summer holidays of 1845, to
Doncaster, where I was a boarder in the house of the head-master.

A word from me in favor of one of the public schools would probably have
decided my guardian to send me there; but there was a _vis inertiae_ in
my total want of social and scholastic ambition. I never in my life felt
the faintest desire to rise in the world either by making the
acquaintance of people of rank (which is the main reason why boys of
middling station are sent to aristocratic schools), or by getting
letters put after my name as a reward for learning what had no intrinsic
charm for me. In the worldly sense I never had any ambition whatever.

It seemed rather hard, after living at Burnley with my kind guardian, to
be sent to Doncaster School and separated from her for five months at a
time, but she thought the separation necessary, as there was nothing in
the world she dreaded more than that her great affection might spoil me.
Always gentle in her ways, always kind and considerate, that admirable
woman had still a remarkable firmness of character, and would act, on
due occasion, in direct opposition both to her own feelings and to mine,
if she believed that duty required it.

In those days there was no railway station at Doncaster, and my guardian
took me from Featherstone (where her brother-in-law, Mr. Hinde, was
vicar) to Doncaster in a hired carriage. I remember that it was an open
carriage and we had nobody with us except the driver, and it was a fine
hot day in August. I remember the long road, the arrival at an inn at
Doncaster not far from the new church, and my first presentation to Mr.
Cape, the head-master, who seemed a very kind and gentle sort of
clergyman to a boy not yet acquainted with his cane. Then I was left
alone in the strange school, not in the best of spirits, and if it had
been difficult to restrain tears when my guardian left me, it became
impossible in the little iron bed in the dormitory at night.

There were not many boarders, perhaps a dozen, and three or four private
pupils who were preparing for Cambridge. All these were lodged in the
head-master's house, which was in a pleasant, open part of the town, on
the road leading to the race-course, just beyond the well-known
Salutation Hotel. Besides these, there were rather a large number of day
scholars,--I forget how many, perhaps fifty or sixty,--and in those days
the schoolhouse was a ground floor under the old theatre. We marched
down thither in the morning under the control of an usher, who was
always with us in our walks. This usher, whose name I well remember, but
do not choose to print, was a vulgar, overbearing man whom it was
difficult to like, yet at the same time we all felt that he was a very
valuable master. Boys feel the difference between a master who is a
gentleman and one who falls short of that ideal. We were clearly aware
that the head-master, Mr. Cape, was a gentleman, and that the usher was
not. Nevertheless, in spite of his occasional coarseness and even
brutality, the usher was a painstaking, honest fellow, who did his duty
very energetically. His best quality, which I appreciate far more now
than I did then, was an extreme readiness to help a willing boy in his
work, by clearly explaining those difficulties that are likely to stop
him in his progress. Mr. Cape was more an examiner than a teacher, at
least for us; with the private pupils he may have been more didactic.
The usher evidently liked to be asked; he was extremely helpful to me,
and thanks to him chiefly I made very rapid progress at Doncaster.
Unfortunately an occasional injustice made it difficult to be so
grateful to him as we ought to have been. Here is an example. One
evening in the playground he told me to get on the back of another boy,
and then thrashed me with a switch from an apple-tree. I begged to be
told for what fault this punishment was inflicted, and the only answer
he condescended to give me was that a master owed no explanation to a
schoolboy. Down to the present time I have never been able to make out
what the punishment was for, and strongly suspect that it was simply to
exercise the usher's arm, which was a powerful one. He was a fair
cricketer, though rather too fat for that exercise, and a capital
swimmer, for which his fat was an advantage. He was an immoderate
snuff-taker. Sometimes he would lay a train of snuff on the back of his
hand and snuff it up greedily and voluptuously. In hot weather he
sometimes sat in his shirt-sleeves, and would occasionally amuse himself
by laying the snuff on his thick fat arm and then pass it all under his
nose, which drew it up as the pneumatic discharging machines drew grain
from the hold of a vessel. The odor of snuff was inseparable from his
person.

On Sunday mornings we were made to read chapters in the Bible before
going to church, and the usher, who was preparing himself to enter Holy
Orders, would sometimes talk to us a little about theology. Once he said
that the establishment of religious toleration in England had been a
deplorable mistake, and that Dissent ought not to be permitted by the
Sovereign. This frank expression of perfect intolerance rather surprised
me even then, and I did not quite know whether it would be just to
extirpate Dissent or not. My principal feeling about the matter was the
prejudice inherited by young English gentlemen of old Tory families,
that Dissent was something indescribably low, and quite beneath the
attention of a gentleman. Still, to go farther and compel Dissenters by
force to attend the services of the Church of England did seem to me
rather hard, and on thinking over the matter seriously in my own mind, I
came to the conclusion that our usher must be wrong, unless Dissenters
were guilty of some crime I was not aware of; but this, after all,
seemed quite possible.

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