Part 1 (2/2)

These stood so high at the time of my birth, that he was felt to be entitled to a country house, as well as to that in Keppel Street; and in order that he ht build such a residence, he took the farm This place he called Julians, and the land runs up to the foot of the hill on which the school and church stand,--on the side towards London

Things there went ainst hiarded the Lord Northwick of those days as a cor us up My father's clients deserted hiloomy chambers in and about Chancery Lane, and his purchases alrong Then, as a final crushi+ng blow, an old uncle, whose heir he was to have been, married and had a family! The house in London was let; and also the house he built at Harrow, from which he descended to a farmhouse on the land, which I have endeavoured to make known to some readers under the name of Orley Farm This place, just as it e lived there, is to be seen in the frontispiece to the first edition of that novel, having had the good fortune to be delineated by no less a pencil than that of John Millais

[Footnote 1: A pupil of his destroyed himself in the rooms]

My two elder brothers had been sent as day-boarders to Harrow School fro the aristocratic crowd,--not on equal terms, because a day-boarder at Harrow in those days was never so received,--but at any rate as other day-boarders I do not suppose that they ell treated, but I doubt whether they were subjected to the ignominy which I endured I was only seven, and I think that boys at seven are now spared a their more considerate seniors I was never spared; and was not even allowed to run to and fro between our house and the school without a daily purgatory No doubt ainst me I remember well, when I was still the junior boy in the school, Dr Butler, the head- me, with all the clouds of Jove upon his brow and all the thunder in his voice, whether it was possible that Harrow School was disgraced by so disreputably dirty a little boy as I! Oh, what I felt at that s I do not doubt that I was dirty;--but I think that he was cruel He must have known me had he seen ing nise me by my face

At this time I was three years at Harrow; and, as far as I can remember, I was the junior boy in the school when I left it

Then I was sent to a private school at Sunbury, kept by Arthur Drury

This, I think, must have been done in accordance with the advice of Henry Drury, as my tutor at Harrow School, and my father's friend, and who may probably have expressed an opinion thatin a satisfactorythe two years I was there, though I never had any pocket-money, and seldom had much in the way of clothes, I lived more nearly on ter race I remember well how, on one occasion, four boys were selected as having been the perpetrators of souess; but I was one of the four, innocent as a babe, but adjudged to have been the guiltiest of the guilty We each had to write out a ser the whole of one term-time ere helped last at every round till the sermon was finished Mine was only done a day or two before the holidays Mrs Drury, when she saw us, shook her head with pitying horror There were ever so many other punishalso under the al that the other three--no doubt wicked boys--were the curled darlings of the school, ould never have selected me to share their wickedness with them I contrived to learn, from words that fell fro coht be supposed to be the leader of wickedness! On the first day of the next term he whispered toWith all a stupid boy's slowness, I said nothing; and he had not the courage to carry reparation further All that was fifty years ago, and it burns h it were yesterday What lily-livered curs those boys must have been not to have told the truth!--at any rate as far as I was concerned I remember their names well, and almost wish to write them here

When I elve there cae which I was destined to fill My two elder brothers had gone there, and the younger had been taken away, being already supposed to have lost his chance of New College It had been one of the great ambitions of o to Winchester, should all beco ratified We all lost the prize which he struggled with infinite labour to put within our reach My eldest brother all but achieved it, and afterwards went to Oxford, taking three exhibitions frolory of a Wykamist He has since made himself well known to the public as a writer in connection with all Italian subjects He is still living as I norite But my other brother died early

While I was at Winchester ave up his practice at the bar, and, unfortunate that he was, took another farm It is odd that a hly educated and a very clever ht make money without any special education or apprenticeshi+p Perhaps of all trades it is the one in which an accurate knowledge of what things should be done, and the bestthem, is most necessary And it is one also for success in which a sufficient capital is indispensable He had no knowledge, and, when he took this second farm, no capital This was the last step preparatory to his final ruin

Soon after I had been sent to Winchester,with her my brother Henry and my two sisters, ere then no more than children This was, I think, in 1827 I have no clear knowledge of her object, or of ht be oods, such as pin-cushi+ons, pepper-boxes, and pocket-knives,--out to the still unfurnished States; and that she conceived that an openingsome bazaar or extended shop in one of the Western cities Whence the money came I do not know, but the pocket-knives and the pepper-boxes were bought, and the bazaar built I have seen it since in the town of Cincinnati,--a sorry building! But I have been told that in those days it was an i edifice My mother went first, with my sisters and second brother Thenmy elder brother before he went to Oxford But there was an interval of so which he and I were at Winchester together

Over a period of forty years, since I began my manhood at a desk in the Post Office, I and my brother, Thomas Adolphus, have been fast friends There have been hot words between us, for perfect friendshi+p bears and allows hot words Few brothers have had more of brotherhood But in those school-days he was, of all my foes, the worst In accordance with the practice of the college, which suber boys from the elder, he was my tutor; and in his capacity of teacher and ruler, he had studied the theories of Draco I remember well how he used to exact obedience after theapples, he used to say, and other little boys will not steal apples The doctrine was already exploded elsewhere, but he stuck to it with conservative energy The result was that, as a part of his daily exercise, he thrashed s should have been possible at a school as a continual part of one's daily life, seeue a very ill condition of school discipline

At this period I remember to have passed one set of holidays--the midsummer holidays--in my father's chambers in Lincoln's Inn There was often a difficulty about the holidays,--as to what should be done withabout a Shakespeare out of a bi-colu my books It was not that I had chosen Shakespeare, but that there was nothing else to read

After a while my brother left Winchester and accompanied my father to America Then another and a different horror fell to e bills had not been paid, and the school tradesmen who administered to the wants of the boys were told not to extend their credit to me Boots, waistcoats, and pocket-handkerchiefs, which, with soht superveillance, were at the command of other scholars, were closed luxuries to me My schoolfellows of course knew that it was so, and I became a Pariah It is the nature of boys to be cruel I have so each other they do usually suffer much, one from the other's cruelty; but I suffered horribly! I could ainst it I had no friend to wholy, and, I have no doubt, skulked about in a most unattractive manner Of course I was ill-dressed and dirty But, ah! hoell I re heart; how I considered whether I should always be alone; whether I could not find e tower, and fro cae of the supplies fro a week pocket-money, which we called battels, and which was advanced to us out of the pocket of the second master On one awful day the second master announced to me that my battels would be stopped He told me the reason,--the battels for the last half-year had not been repaid; and he urged his oillingness to advance thea ould not have been h pocket-money from other sources never reached ain, perhaps three or four tiiven to certain servants of the college, in payment, it may be presumed, for some extra services And nohen it came to the turn of any servant, he received sixty-nine shi+llings instead of seventy, and the cause of the defalcation was explained to hi that I had picked his pocket

When I had been at Winchester soland and took me away Whether this was done because of the expense, or because e was supposed to have passed away, I do not know As a fact, I should, I believe, have gained the prize, as there occurred in my year an exceptional nu, as there would have been no funds for my maintenance at the University till I should have entered in upon the fruition of the founder's endowment, and my career at Oxford must have been unfortunate

When I left Winchester, I had threeas yet endured nine My father at this tier brother in America, took himself to live at a wretched tumble-down farmhouse on the second farm he had hired! And I was taken there with him It was nearly three miles from Harrow, at Harrow Weald, but in the parish; and froain sent to that school as a day-boarder Let those who knohat is the usual appearance and what the usual appurtenances of a boy at such a school, consider whattheh the lanes, added to the other little troubles and labours of a school life!

Perhaps the eighteento and fro on those miserably dirty lanes, was the worst period of e at which I could appreciate at its full the misery of expulsion from all social intercourse I had not only no friends, but was despised by all my companions The farmhouse was not only no more than a farmhouse, but was one of those far into the neighbouring horse-pond As it crept doards from house to stables, from stables to barns, fro-heaps, one could hardly tell where one began and the other ended! There was a parlour in whichbooks; but I passedinnocent love to the bailiff's daughter The far, when the horrors of the school were over; but it all added to the cruelty of the days

A sizar at a Cae, or a Bible-clerk at Oxford, has not pleasant days, or used not to have thenised, and the misery was measured I was a sizar at a fashi+onable school, a condition never pre frohill, to sit next to the sons of peers,--ortradesnities I endured are not to be described As I look back it seeainst me,--those of masters as well as boys

I was allowed to join in no plays Nor did I learn anything,--for I was taught nothing The only expense, except that of books, to which a house-boarder was then subject, was the fee to a tutor, auineas My tutor took me without the fee; but when I heard him declare the fact in the pupil-roorateful for the charity I was never a coward, and cared for a thrashi+ng as little as any boy, but one cannot ainst the acerbities of three hundred tyrants without a e of which at that time I possessed none I know that I skulked, and was odious to the eyes of those I admired and envied At last I was driven to rebellion, and there caht,--at the end of which my opponent had to be taken home for a while If these words be ever printed, I trust that some schoolfellow of those days may still be left alive ill be able to say that, in clai a false boast

I wish I could give soloom of that farmhouse My elder brother--Toh the world, I think, knows him best as Adolphus--was at Oxford

My father and I lived together, he having noexcept what came from the farm My memory tells me that he was always in debt to his landlord and to the tradesence no one could accuse him Our table was poorer, I think, than that of the bailiff who still hung on to our shattered fortunes The furniture was arden, but no gardener; and enerally, I fear, in vain,--to getInto the hay-field on holidays I was often coo,--not, I fear, withthe last ten years of his life, he spent nearly the half of his tiony fro He had at this time commenced a work,--an Encyclopaedia Ecclesiastica, as he called it,--on which he laboured to the moment of his death It was his a the denominations of every fraternity of monks and every convent of nuns, with all their orders and subdivisions Under crushi+ng disadvantages, with few or no books of reference, with irateful task with unflagging industry When he died, three nuht had been published by subscription; and are now, I fear, unknown, and buried in theup of which has broken so h he would try, as it were by a side wind, to get a useful spurt of work out of arden or in the hay-field, had constantly an eye to my scholastic improvement From my very babyhood, before those first days at Harrow, I had to take side of hi, and say my early rules from the Latin Graed at these early lessons to hold uilty fault, hehis razor or dropping his shaving-brush No father was ever h I think none ever knew less how to go about the work Of anised the need He allowed himself no distraction, and did not seem to think it was necessary to a child I cannot bethink ratification; but forto make any sacrifice At this tiive his time to teach me, for every hour that he was not in the fields was devoted to his monks and nuns; but he would require me to sit at a table with Lexicon and Gradus before me As I look back on my resolute idleness and fixed determination to make no use whatever of the books thus thrust upon me, or of the hours, and as I bear in y in after-life, I am in doubt whether my nature is wholly altered, or whether his plan holly bad In those days he never punished rieved him much by my idleness; but in passion he knew not what he did, and he has knocked reat folio Bible which he always used In the old house were the two first volumes of Cooper's novel, called _The Prairie_, a relic--probably a dishonest relic--of some subscription to Hookham's library Other books of the kind there was none I wonder how many dozen times I read those two first volumes

It was the horror of those dreadful walks backwards and forwards which made my life so bad What so pleasant, what so sweet, as a walk along an English lane, when the air is sweet and the weather fine, and when there is a char? But here were the same lanes four times a-day, in wet and dry, in heat and su ht have been known a all the boys at a hundred yards' distance by my boots and trousers,--and was conscious at all times that I was so known I remembered constantly that address froht with equal justice have said the saley never in his life was able to say an ill-natured word Dr Butler only becah, but his successor lived to be Archbishop of Canterbury

I think it was in the autumn of 1831 that my mother, with the rest of the family, returned from America She lived at first at the farmhouse, but it was only for a short time She came back with a book written about the United States, and the immediate pecuniary success which that work obtained enabled her to take us all back to the house at Harrow,--not to the first house, which would still have been beyond her means, but to that which has since been called Orley Farm, and which was an Eden as co went on under somewhat improved circumstances The three es were made in my wardrobe My reat element of happiness was added to us all in the affectionate and life-enduring friendshi+p of the fahbour, Colonel Grant But I was never able to overcome--or even to attempt to overcome--the absolute isolation of my school position