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Philip Gilbert Hamerton

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We were taken to the services in Doncaster old church, which was
destroyed by fire many years afterwards. Though not yet in my teens, I
had an intense delight in architecture, and deeply enjoyed the noble old
building, one of the finest of its class in England. Our pew was in the
west gallery, not far from the organ, and from it we had a good view of
the interior. The effect of the music was very strong upon me, as the
instrument was a fine one, and I was fully alive to the influence of
music and architecture in combination. The two arts go together far
better than architecture and painting; for music seems to make
architecture alive, as it rolls along the aisles and under the lofty
vaults. I well remember feeling, when some noble anthem was being
performed, as if the sculptured heads between the arches added a noble
animation to their serenity. Even now, the impression received in those
early days still remains in my memory with considerable clearness and
fidelity, and I believe that the habit of attending service in such a
beautiful church was a powerful stimulus to an inborn passion for
architecture.

I had already taken lessons in drawing, of the kind which in those days
was thought suitable for boys who were not expected to be professional
artists, so the drawing-master at Doncaster had me amongst his pupils.
He was an elderly man, rather stout, and very respectable. His house was
extremely neat and tidy, with proper mahogany furniture, and no artistic
eccentricities of any kind whatever. He himself was always
irreproachably dressed, and he wore a large ruby ring on the little
finger of his left hand. To us boys he appeared to be a personage of
great dignity, but we were not afraid of him in spite of the dignity of
his manners, as he could not apply the cane. He was not unkind, yet in
all my life I never met with anybody concerned with the fine arts who
had so little sympathy, so little enthusiasm. On the whole, he was
distinctly gentle with me, but I made him angry twice. He had done me
the honor to promote me to water-color, and as I wanted a rag to wipe my
slab and brushes, I ventured to ask for one, on which he turned upon me
a glance of haughty surprise, and said, "Do you suppose, sir, that I can
undertake to supply you with rags?" This will give an idea of the
curiously unsympathetic nature of the man. On another occasion I was
drawing a house, or beginning to draw one, when the master came to look
over my shoulder and found great fault with me for beginning with the
upper part of the edifice. "What stonemason or bricklayer," said he,
"would think of building his chimney before he had laid the first row of
stones on the foundation?" A young pupil must not correct the bad
reasoning of his elders, but it seemed to me that the cases of a
bricklayer building a real house and an artist representing one on paper
were not precisely the same. Later in life I found that the best artists
brought their works forward as much as possible simultaneously,
sketching all the parts lightly at first, and keeping them all in the
same degree of finish till the end. [Footnote: The most rational way to
paint is first to paint all the large masses together, then the smaller
or secondary masses, and finally the details, bringing the picture
forward all together, as nearly as possible.]

Nevertheless, the drawing-lessons were always a delightful break in our
week's occupation, and I remember with pleasure the walk in the morning
down to the drawing-master's house, two days in the week, and the happy
hour of messing with water-color that followed it. In those days of
blissful ignorance I had, of course, no conception of the difficulties
of art, and was making that delusively rapid apparent progress which is
so very encouraging to all incipient amateurs. Not a single study of
those times remains in my portfolios to-day, and I know not what may
have become of them. This is the more to be regretted, that in the fine
weather our master took us into the fields round Doncaster and taught us
to sketch from nature, which we accomplished in a rudimentary way.

My dear, wise, and excellent guardian was always anxious that I should
receive as good an education as my opportunities would permit, so she
insisted on my learning French, and had herself taught me the elements
of that language, which she was able to read, though she did not pretend
to speak it. On going to Doncaster I found Latin and Greek so serious a
business that I wanted to lighten my burdens, and begged to be excused
from going on with French; but my guardian (who, with all her exquisite
gentleness, had a very strong will) would not hear of any such
abandonment, and wrote very determinedly on the subject both to me and
to Mr. Cape. It is extremely probable that this exercise of my
guardian's will may have had a great influence on my future life, as
without some early knowledge of French I might not have felt tempted to
pursue the study later, and if I had never spoken French my whole
existence would have been quite different.

Our French master at Doncaster was an Italian of good family named
Testa, one of the most perfect gentlemen I ever met, and an excellent
teacher. My deepest regret about him now is that I did not learn Italian
with him also, then or afterwards. [Footnote: It is astonishing how many
chances of improvement young men foolishly allow to slip by them. It
would have been quite worth while after I became a free agent to go and
spend six months or more at Doncaster, simply to read Italian with so
good a master as Testa.] I learned Italian later in life, and with a far
inferior master. Signor Testa was a tall, thin man, of rather cold and
stately manners, with a fine-looking, noble head covered with curly
brown hair. He was always exquisitely clean and orderly, both about his
person and the books and things that belonged to him in his rooms, where
there was an atmosphere of almost feminine refinement, though their
occupant was by no means effeminate in his thoughts or bearing. We
understood that he had left Italy in consequence of some political
difficulty, and we knew that he had still relations there. One day, as
we were engaged with our lesson at his lodgings, he took some leaves and
a faded flower or two that had just arrived in a letter from Italy, and
said, with tears in his eyes, "These have come from my father's place."
Now it so happened that the eldest boy in our class was liable to fits
of perfectly uncontrollable laughter (what the French call _le fou
rire_), and, as the reader is sure to know, if he has ever been troubled
with that disease himself, the fit very often comes on just at the
moment when the patient feels that he is called upon to look
particularly grave. This is what happened in the present case. Our
unlucky fellow-pupil was tickled with something in Testa's accent or
manner, or perhaps as he was an English boy the foreigner's tenderness
of feeling may have seemed to him absurd; but whatever may have been the
reason, his face became convulsed with suppressed laughter, which burst
forth at last uncontrollably. This made the rest of us laugh too--not at
poor Testa, but at our unworthy comrade. I shall never forget the
Italian gentleman's look on that occasion. His eyes were still brimming
with tears, but he laid down the flattened leaves and flowers and looked
at us all round with an expression that cut me, at least, to the quick.
"_Young gentlemen_," he said, "_I did not expect you to be so unkind_."
I longed to explain, but did not find words at the moment, and we went
on with our lesson. The fact was that Testa had not the least sense of
humor in his composition, and so he could not understand what had
happened. A humorous man, acquainted with the nature of boys, would have
understood the attack of _fou rire_, and forgiven it; but then a
humorous man would have thought twice before appealing to a set of
English boys for sympathy with the feelings of an exile. The incident
certainly increased my feelings of respect for Signor Testa, and made me
try to please him. The French lessons were very agreeable to me, and
besides duly preparing them, I read some French on my own account, and
acquired a liking for the language that has remained with me ever since.

If the reader has the sound old-fashioned notions about education by
which all subjects were strictly divided into the two classes of serious
and frivolous pursuits, he will already have suspicions about the
soundness of a training that included the two idle accomplishments of
Drawing and French, and what will he say, I wonder, when music is added
to the list? My initiation into music took place in the following
manner. We had a dancing-master who came regularly to Mr. Cape's house
to prepare us to shine in society, and his instrument was the convenient
dancing-master's pocket fiddle or kit. Although this instrument gives
forth but a feeble kind of music, I was far more enchanted with it than
by the dancing, and wrote a most persuasive letter to my good guardian
imploring her to let me study the violin. Those were the happy times
when one had energy for everything! I had already three languages on
hand, and the art of painting in water-colors, besides which I was in a
mathematical school where boys were prepared for Cambridge, [Footnote:
Doncaster School at that time was a sort of little nursery for
Cambridge. Mr. Cape was a Cambridge man, and so was his brother, the
able master of Peterborough School.] but there seemed to be no reason
why the art of violin-playing should not be added to these pursuits. My
guardian, before consenting, prudently wrote to Mr. Cape to ask if this
new accomplishment would not interfere too much with other matters, and
his answer was in these words: "The lad is getting on well enough with
his studies, so if he wants to amuse himself a little by scraping
catgut, even let him scrape away!" It will be seen that Mr. Cape did not
assign to music the high rank in education which has been attributed to
it by some famous thinkers in ancient and modern times. Few musical
sensations experienced during my whole life have equalled in intensity
the sensation of hearing our dancing-master play upon a full-sized
violin, after the weak and thin tones that our ears had been accustomed
to by his kit. I was so little in the way of hearing music at Doncaster
that the richer note of the violin seemed musical as the lyre of Apollo.
A contrast so striking made me more passionately eager to learn, but I
was informed by one of the private pupils who exercised considerable
authority over the younger boys, that although I might study the violin
with the dancing-master, I was never to practise it by myself. This
restriction was pardonable in one who might reasonably dread the
torturing attempts of a beginner, but it was certainly not favorable to
my progress. However, in course of time it came to be relaxed; that is,
as soon as I could play tunes.

It is very odd that any one who dislikes dancing as heartily as I have
always disliked it in manhood, should have been rather a brilliant
performer when a boy. Our dancing-master was extremely pleased with me,
and encouraged me by many compliments; nay, he even went so far as to
teach me a sailor's hornpipe, which I danced in public as a _pas seul_
when the school gave a theatrical entertainment on the approach of the
Christmas holidays. All this is simply inconceivable now, for there is
nothing which bores me so thoroughly as a ball, and I would at any time
travel fifty miles to avoid one.

At school the principal amusement was cricket, for which I soon acquired
an intense aversion. All games bore me except chess and billiards, and
it was especially hard to be compelled to field out to please the elder
boys, and so waste the precious holiday afternoons. Our cricket ground
was on the racecourse, and when I could get away I did so most joyfully,
and betook myself to a quiet place amongst the furze nearer to the Red
House than the Grand Stand. There my great delight was to read Scott's
poems, which I possessed in pocket volumes. The same volumes are in my
study now, and simply to handle them is enough to bring back many
sensations of long-past boyhood. Of all the influences that had sway
over me in those days and for long afterwards, the influence of Scott
was by far the strongest. A boy cannot make a better choice. Scott has
the immense advantage over dull authors of being almost always
interesting, and the equally great advantage over many exciting authors
that he never leaves an unhealthy feeling in the mind. I began with "The
Lady of the Lake," then read "Marmion," and "The Lay of the Last
Minstrel" and the Ballads, and finally "Rokeby." These were in separate
small volumes, which gave me a desire to possess other authors in the
same convenient form, so I added Goldsmith, Crabbe, Kirke White, and
Moore's "Irish Melodies." A prize for history gave me "Paradise Lost" in
two volumes of my favorite size, and two school-fellows, who saw that I
had a taste for such volumes, kindly gave me others. During the holidays
my guardian authorized the purchase of a Shakespeare in seven pocket
volumes, and the "Spectator" in eight, so I had quite a little library,
which became inexpressibly dear to me. It is very remarkable that for a
long time I knew Scott thoroughly as a poet without having read a single
novel by him. Having been invited by one of my school-fellows to a
country house not very far from Doncaster, I was asked by the lady of
the house what authors I had read, and on mentioning Scott's poems was
told that he was greater as a novelist than as a poet, and that the
Waverley novels were certainly his finest works. This seemed incredible
to me then, the poems being so delightful that they could not possibly
be surpassed. On another occasion I happened to be standing with Mr.
Cape in the little chapel at Conisborough Castle, and having heard from
an older school-fellow that Athelstane had died there, I asked Mr. Cape
if it was true. "Yes," he answered, "if you believe Sir Walter Scott."
Not having read "Ivanhoe," I was under the impression that the
Athelstane in question was an historical personage.

Nothing in the retrospect of life strikes me as more astonishing than
the rapid mental growth that must have taken place between the date of
my father's death and its second or third anniversary. When my father
died I was simply a child, though rather a precocious one, as the
journal in Wales testifies; but between two and three years after that
event the child had become a boy, with a keen taste for literature,
which, if it had been taken advantage of by his teachers, ought to have
made his education a more complete success than it ever became.

The misfortune was that the classics were not taught as literature at
all, but as exercises in grammar and prosody. They were dissected by
teachers who were simply lecturers on the science of language, and who
had not large views even about that. Our whole attention being directed
to the technicalities of the pedagogue, we did not perceive that the
classic authors had produced poems which, as literature, were not
inferior to those of our best English poets. So it happened that those
of us who had literary tastes were content to satisfy them in reading
English authors, and left them, as it were, at the door of the
classroom. I worked courageously enough at the Latin books which were
set before me, but never found the slightest enjoyment in them; indeed,
it was only much later, and through the medium of French and Italian,
that I gained some partial access to the literary beauty of Latin. As
for Greek, I began it vigorously at Doncaster, but I did not get beyond
the rudiments during my stay there.




CHAPTER VIII.


1845.

Early attempts in English verse.--Advantages of life at Doncaster.--A
school incident.--Fagging.--Story of a dog.--Robbery.--My schoolfellow,
Henry Alexander.--His remarkable influence.--Other schoolfellows.
--Story of a boat.--A swimming adventure.--Our walks and battles.

The love of literature was naturally followed by some early attempts at
versification in English, which is generally looked upon as a silly
waste of time in a boy, though if he writes Latin verses, which we were
taught to do, he is thought to be seriously occupied. Prom the age of
eleven to that of twenty-one I wrote English verses very frequently, and
am now very glad I did so, being quite convinced that it was a most
profitable exercise in the language. My early verses were invariably
echoes of my dearly beloved Sir Walter Scott, a master whom it is not
very difficult to imitate so far as mere versification is concerned. One
little incident about this early verse-making is worth mentioning in
this place. I was staying for a few days with a school-fellow at a house
near Doncaster, when I dreamed a new ballad about a shipwreck, and on
awaking wrote it down at once. The thing would not be worth quoting, if
it were possible to remember it; but it was correct enough in rhymes and
metre.

My life at Doncaster was not on the whole unhappy, and the steady
discipline of the school was doing me much good. Mr. Cape was a very
severe master, and he used the cane very freely; but to a boy who had
lived under the tyranny of my father Mr. Cape's severity seemed a light
affliction. He kept up his dignity by seldom appearing in the
schoolroom; he sat in his library or in the dining-room in a large
morocco-covered arm-chair, holding a book in one hand whilst the other
was always ready to clasp the cane that he kept close by. Any failure of
memory would cause him to dart a severe look at the delinquent, a false
quantity made him scowl, and when he suspected real carelessness the
cane was resorted to at once. Unfortunately he could not apply it and
keep his temper at the same time. The exercise roused him to fury, and a
punishment which in his first intention was to have been mild became
cruel through the effect of his own rapidly increasing irritation. Mr.
Cape's health was not good, and no doubt this added to the natural
irritability of his temper. There was one unfortunate youngster whose
hands were covered with chilblains, and who was constantly displeasing
Mr. Cape by inattention or inaccuracy, so he incurred such perpetual
canings that his hands were pitiable to see, and must have been
extremely painful. Our head-master was no doubt laudably, or selfishly,
anxious that we should get on with our work so as to do him credit at
Cambridge, where most of us were expected to go; but he seemed almost
incapable of pity. I remember having the intense pleasure of playing him
a little trick just after he had been caning a lad who was a very good
friend of mine.

It happened in this way--but first I must describe the topography of the
place. Mr. Cape's house was a tall brick building that looked upon the
street on one side, and on our playground (which had formerly been a
garden) on the other. At the other end of the garden was a wash-house
with the schoolroom over it, and in the wash-house there was a large
copper for boiling linen. In the house the dining-room looked over the
play-ground, and it somehow happened (perhaps it was in the Easter
holidays) that there were no pupils left in the place but my friend
Brokenribs and I. [Footnote: We always called him Brokenribs, which
recalled his real name by a sort of imitation; besides which, though his
ribs had not actually been broken, he had suffered from a good many
bruises.] Mr. Cape called him up into the dining-room after dark, and
began to thrash him. Brokenribs, after some time, began to think that a
sufficient number of strokes had been administered, and put the
dining-table between himself and his adversary, who could not get at him
any longer. I was in the playground, and understood all that was passing
by the shadows on the window-blinds.

It was most amusing to me, as a spectator, to see the shadow of
Brokenribs flit rapidly past, and still better perhaps to see it
followed by that of Mr. Cape, with bald head and uplifted cane. When
this entertainment had lasted some time I heard a great banging of doors,
and Brokenribs issued from the house, rushing like a hunted deer the whole
length of the playground. "Cape's after me!" he said. "Where shall I hide?"
"In the copper!" I answered with a sudden inspiration, and ran into the
wash-house with him, where I lifted the lid and stowed him away in
safety. The lid had but just been replaced when Mr. Cape appeared in the
playground and asked if I had seen Brokenribs. "Yes, sir, certainly; he
was running this way, sir." I accompanied Mr. Cape into the wash-house,
which had an outer door giving access to a lane, and observed with
pleasure that he was forced to the irresistible conclusion that
Brokenribs had taken flight. The lad's parents lived at an accessible
distance (perhaps twenty miles), so Mr. Cape was tormented with the
unpleasant idea that the lad had gone home to tell his own story. He
therefore ordered a gig and drove off so as to catch Brokenribs during
his flight. As my friend had been sitting in cold water, I got him out
when the coast was clear, and made him go to bed, where the housekeeper
sent him a treacle posset. After driving many a mile in vain, Mr. Cape
returned very late, and never said a word on the subject to either of
us.

Poor Brokenribs was not only very often caned, but he was fag to a
tyrannical private pupil, who made him suffer severely. The private
pupils upheld the sacred institution of fagging, which gave them a
pleasant sense of authority, and as they sat like gods above us, they
were not in danger of retaliation. Brokenribs was fag to a young man who
determined that he should learn two things,--first, to endure pain
without flinching, and secondly, to smoke tobacco. To achieve the first
of these great purposes, he used to twist the lad's arms and administer
a certain number of hard blows upon them. This he did every day so long
as the whim lasted. As for the smoking, poor Brokenribs had to smoke a
certain number of pipes every day. A single pipe made him look ghastly,
and the whole series made him dreadfully ill. I remember his white face
at such times; but he attained his reward in becoming an accomplished
and precocious smoker.

I was fag myself at one time to a private pupil; but he was not very
tyrannical with me, and only ordered me to light fires, which was a
valuable element in my education.

It gives one a fine independence of servants to be able to light a fire
quickly and well. This accomplishment enables a man to get up as early
as
he chooses, even in winter, and I have never forgotten it; indeed, I
lighted a fire an hour before writing this page. In my opinion, it would
be wise to teach every boy the art of doing without servants on
occasion.

The private pupils exercised authority in other ways than by converting
us into fags. It so happened that I became possessor of an unfortunate
tawny dog. How one boy should be owner of a dog at school when the
others had nothing to do with him may be difficult to understand; and
indeed my ownership did not last for very long, but it was pleasant to
me whilst it lasted. The poor beast, if I remember rightly, belonged to
somebody who did not want him, and was going to have him slain. I had
always an intense affection for dogs, and begged Mr. Cape to let me keep
this one, promising that it should not be a nuisance. I was rather a
favorite with the head-master, so he granted this very extraordinary
request, and it was understood that the dog was to lodge in a box in the
wash-house. I bought some fresh straw for him, and took the greatest
care of him, so that he soon became strongly attached to me. Had there
been no private pupils the creature would have been safe enough, as I
would have fought any lad of my own age in his behalf, and Brokenribs,
who was older, would have fought the bigger boys; but we none of us
dared to resist the privates, who were grown men. One of the privates
thought that a small boy ought not to possess a dog, and began to affirm
that the animal was a nuisance. He then said it would be an improvement
to cut off its tail, which he did accordingly, in spite of all my
remonstrances. I pitied the poor beast when it lay suffering with its
bleeding stump, and did all that affection could suggest for its
consolation; but shortly afterwards the same private pupil, who had a
taste for pistol-shooting, thought it would be good fun to shoot at a
living target, so he took my dog away into a field and shot him there. I
knew what he was going to do, but had no power to prevent it, as he had
begun by persuading Mr. Cape that the poor beast was a nuisance, which
he certainly was not. He was a very quiet, timid dog, of an anxious,
apprehensive temperament, having probably never had reason to place much
trust in the human species.

There was one lad at the school who was a coarse bully, and I remember
his playing a trick on me which was nothing less than pure brigandage.
He ordered me to give him my keys, and rummaged in my private box. He
found a small telescope in it which was to his liking, and took it. I
never got any redress about that telescope, as the bully coolly said it
had always belonged to him, and he was powerful enough to act on the
great principle that _la force prime le droit_.

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