Part 11 (1/2)

These enormities now made my monthly ”reports,” when they were sent home, anything but favourable; but I believe my mother was intensely diverted by them: I am sure that the Stanleys were. A worse crime, however, was our pa.s.sion for cooking, in which we became exceedingly expert. Very soon after a tremendous punishment for having been caught for the second time frying potato chips, we formed the audacious project of cooking a hare! The hare was bought, and the dreadful inside was disposed of with much the same difficulty and secrecy, and in much the same manner, in which the Richmond murderess disposed of her victims; but we had never calculated how long the creature would take to roast even with a good fire, much more by our wretched embers: and long before it was accomplished, Mrs. Collins, the matron, was down upon us, and we and the hare were taken into ignominious custody.

Another great amus.e.m.e.nt was making sulphur casts and electrotypes, and we really made some very good ones.

My great love for anything of historic romance, however, rendered the Louis Philippe revolution the overwhelming interest of this quarter, and put everything else into the shade. In the preceding autumn the murder of the d.u.c.h.esse de Praslin had occupied every one, and we boys used to lie on the floor for hours poring over the horrible map of the murder-room which appeared in the ”Ill.u.s.trated,” in which all the pools of blood were indicated. But that was nothing to the enthusiastic interest over the sack of the Tuileries and the escape of the Royal Family: I have never known anything like it in after life.

I have often heard since much of the immoralities of a public-school life, but I can truly say that when I was there, I saw nothing of them.

A very few boys, however, can change the whole character of a school, especially in a wrong direction. ”A little worm-wood can pollute a hive of honey,” was one of the wise sayings of Pius II. I do not think that my morals were a bit the worse for Harrow, but from what I have heard since of all that went on there even in my time, I can only conclude it was because--at that time certainly--”je n'avais pas le go?t du pech?,”

as I once read in a French novel.

At Easter, 1848, I left Harrow for the holidays, little imagining that I should never return there. I should have been very sorry had I known it.

On the whole, the pleasurable ”adventures” of a public-school life had always outweighed its disagreeables; though I was never in strong enough health for any real benefit or enjoyment.

IV

LYNCOMBE

”Les longues maladies usent la douleur, et les longues esp?rances usent la joie.”--MME. DE S?VIGN?.

”One adequate support For the calamities of mortal life Exists, one only--an a.s.sured belief That the procession of our fate, however Sad or disturbed, is ordered by a Being Of infinite benevolence and power, Whose everlasting purposes embrace All accidents, converting them to good.”

--WORDSWORTH.

”Condemned to Hope's delusive mire, As we toil on from day to day By sudden stroke or slow decline Our means of comfort drop away.”

--JOHNSON.

”It is well we cannot see into the future. There are few boys of fourteen who would not be ashamed of themselves at forty.”

--JEROME K. JEROME.

Of all the unhappy summers of my boyhood, that of 1848 was the most miserable. When I left Harrow at Easter, I was very really ill. The iron frame which had been made for my back had seriously injured the spine which it was intended to cure, and a bad fall down the school steps at Harrow had increased the malady. When Sir Benjamin Brodie saw me, he said that I must lie down for at least the greater part of many months, and that a return to Harrow was quite out of the question. This, however, was concealed from me at first, and when I knew it, I was too ill to have any regrets. We went first to Torquay, stopping on the way to visit Mrs. Alexander, a person who afterwards, for some years, bore a large share in our life. In her youth, as Miss Mary Manning, she had been a governess in the family of Sir John Malcolm, and, while living with the Malcolms at Hyde Hall near Cambridge, had been the most intimate early friend of my Uncle Julius. People generally thought that he had been engaged to her, but this, I believe, was never the case. She had married a Mr. Alexander, a physician at Edinburgh, who soon left her a widow, and since that time she had possessed no settled home. She was very tall, serene, and had a beautiful countenance, and her old-fas.h.i.+oned dress was always wonderfully refined and in keeping with her appearance. She seemed to have the power of imposing her own personality upon her surroundings, and subduing the life and movement around her into an intellectual as well as a physical calm. She had a melodious low voice, a delicate Scotch accent, a perfectly self-possessed manner, and a sweet and gentle dignity. In conversation she was witty and genial, but never rude. With wonderful power of narration, she had the art of throwing unspeakable interest and charm over the most commonplace things: yet she never exaggerated. All the clever men who came in contact with her were bound under her spell.

Whewell, Worsley, Landor, Bunsen, Sedgwick adored her, and did not wonder at my uncle's adoration. Saint-Amand's description of Mme. de Maintenon might have been written for her--”Elle garda, dans sa vieillesse, cette sup?riorit? de style et de langage, cette distinction de mani?res, ce tact exquis, cette finesse, cette douceur et cette fermet? de caract?re, ce charme et cette ?l?vation d'esprit qui, ?

toutes les ?poques de son existence, lui valurent tant d'?loges et lui attir?rent tant d'amiti?.”

This is one view of Mrs. Alexander, and, as far as it goes, it is perfectly true. But scarcely any characters are all of one piece. She was also boundlessly subtle, and when she had an object in view she spared no means to attain it. For her own ends, with her sweetness unruffled, she would remorselessly sacrifice her best friends. The most egotistical woman in the world, she _expected_ every one to fall under her spell, and calmly and gently but consistently hated any one who escaped. Whilst she almost imperceptibly flattered her superiors in rank and position, she ruthlessly and often heartlessly trampled upon those whom she (sometimes wrongly) considered her inferiors. She demanded sovereignty in every house she entered, and she could always find a way to punish rebellion. She made herself friends that ”men might receive her into their houses,” and when she had once entered them she never relaxed her foothold.

There is a description in the Life of George Sand which might be well applied to this view of Mrs. Alexander--”Elle ?tait une personne glac?e autant que glaciale.... Ce n'?tait pas qu'elle ne fut aimable, elle ?tait gracieuse ? la surface, un grand savoir-vivre lui tenant lieu de grace v?ritable. Mais elle n'aimait r?ellement personne et ne s'int?ressait ? rien qu'? elle-m?me.”

When we first saw Mrs. Alexander, she was living in a small lodging at Heavitree near Exeter. In the following year she came to Hurstmonceaux Rectory for three days and stayed three weeks. The year after she came for three weeks and stayed five years. From the first she was supreme at the Rectory, ruling even Aunt Esther with unswerving and ever-increasing power; but on the whole her presence was an advantage. Her education and strong understanding enabled her to enter into all my uncle's pursuits and interests as his wife could never have done, and to outsiders she was usually suave, courteous, and full of agreeable conversation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TOWER AT ROCKEND, TORQUAY.]

Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther visited Rockend when we were there, and as my aunts when together generally acted as foils to each other, I should have been at liberty to enjoy the really beautiful place--its delightful gardens, storm-beaten rocks, and the tower where Aunt Lucy ”made her meditations”--if I had been well enough; but I had generally to spend the greater part of the day lying upon the floor on a hard backboard and in a state of great suffering. It was often an interest at this time to listen to Uncle Julius as he read aloud in the family circle pa.s.sages connected with the French Revolution, Kingsley's ”Saint's Tragedy,”

which had then recently appeared, or the papers which my uncle and his friends were then contributing to the Magazine for the People which Kingsley was getting up. No one read so well as Uncle Julius--a whole whirlwind of tragedy, an unutterable depth of anguish and pathos could be expressed in the mere tone of his voice; and it was not merely tone; he really thus _felt_ what he read, and so carried away his listeners, that all their actual surroundings were invisible or forgotten. Those who never heard Julius Hare read the Communion Service can have no idea of the depths of humility and pa.s.sion in those sublime prayers.

In everything Uncle Julius was as unsuited to the nineteenth century as he well could be. He used to declare that he never would read a book which he knew would interest him, till the exact mood of his mind was fitted for it, till the sun happened to be s.h.i.+ning where it ought, and till weather and time and situation all combined to suit the subject and give its full effect, and he usually had numbers of books by him waiting for this happy conjunction, but, when it arrived, he did the books full justice.