Part 1 (2/2)

”O moon, that s.h.i.+nest in the heaven so blue, I only wish that I could s.h.i.+ne like you!”

and terminating with one of those fine touches of nature which rise superior to the trammels of ordinary versification,

”But I to bed must be going soon, So I will not address thee more, O moon!”

will no doubt go down to posterity in the Alb.u.m of his sister Mary.

For the first fourteen years of his life, the education of Mr.

Verdant Green was conducted wholly under the shadow of his paternal roof, upon principles fondly imagined to be the soundest and purest for the formation of his character. Mrs. Green, who was as good and motherly a soul as ever lived,

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 11]

was yet (as we have shown) one of the Sappeys of Sapcot, a family that were not renowned either for common sense or worldly wisdom, and her notions of a boy's education were of that kind laid down by her favourite poet, Cowper, in his ”Tirocinium” that we are

”Well-tutor'd ~only~ while we share A mother's lectures and a nurse's care;”

and in her horror of all other kind of instruction (not that she admitted Mrs. Toosypegs to her counsels), she fondly kept Master Verdant at her own ap.r.o.n-strings. The task of teaching his young idea how to shoot was committed chiefly to his sisters' governess, and he regularly took his place with them in the school-room. These daily exercises and mental drillings were subject to the inspection of their maiden-aunt, Miss Virginia Verdant, a first cousin of Mr.

Green's, who had come to visit at the Manor during Master Verdant's infancy, and had remained there ever since; and this generals.h.i.+p was crowned with such success, that her nephew grew up the girlish companion of his sisters, with no knowledge of boyish sports, and no desire for them.

The motherly and spinsterial views regarding his education were favoured by the fact that he had no playmates of his own s.e.x and age; and since his father was an only child, and his mother's brothers had died in their infancy, there were no cousins to initiate him into the mysteries of boyish games and feelings. Mr. Green was a man who only cared to live a quiet, easy-going life, and would have troubled himself but little about his neighbours, if he had had any; but the Manor Green lay in an agricultural district, and, saving the Rectory, there was no other large house for miles around. The rector's wife, Mrs. Larkyns, had died shortly after the birth of her first child, a son, who was being educated at a public school; and this was enough, in Mrs. Green's eyes, to make a too intimate acquaintance between her boy and Master Larkyns a thing by no means to be desired. With her favourite poet she would say,

”For public schools, 'tis public folly feeds;”

and, regarding them as the very hotbeds of all that is wrong, she would turn a deaf, though polite, ear to the rector whenever he said, ”Why don't you let your Verdant go with my Charley? Charley is three years older than Verdant, and would take him under his wing.” Mrs.

Green would as soon think of putting one of her chickens under the wing of a hawk, as intrusting the innocent Verdant to the care of the scape-grace Charley; so she still persisted in her own system of education, despite all that the rector could advise to the contrary.

[12 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]

As for Master Verdant, he was only too glad at his mother's decision, for he partook of all her alarm about public schools, though from a different cause. It was not very often that he visited at the Rectory during Master Charley's holidays; but when he did, that young gentleman favoured him with such accounts of the peculiar knack the second master possessed of finding out all your tenderest places when he ”licked a feller” for a false quant.i.ty, ”that, by Jove! you couldn't sit down for a fortnight without squeaking;” and of the jolly mills they used to have with the town cads, who would lie in wait for you, and half kill you if they caught you alone; and of the fun it was to make a junior form f.a.g for you, and do all your dirty work; - that Master Verdant's hair would almost stand on end at such horrors, and he would gasp for very dread lest such should ever be ~his~ dreadful doom.

And then Master Charley would take a malicious pleasure in consoling him, by saying, ”Of course, you know, you'll only have to f.a.g for the first two or three years; then - if you get into the fourth form - you'll be able to have a f.a.g for yourself. And it's awful fun, I can tell you, to see the way some of the f.a.gs get riled at cricket! You get a feller to give you a few b.a.l.l.s, just for practice, and you hit the ball into another feller's ground; and then you tell your f.a.g to go and pick it up. So he goes to do it, when the other feller sings out, 'Don't touch that ball, or I'll lick you!' So you tell the f.a.g to come to you, and you say, 'Why don't you do as I tell you?' And he says, 'Please, sir!' and then the little beggar blubbers. So you say to him, 'None of that, sir! Touch your toes!' We always make 'em wear straps on purpose. And then his trousers go tight and beautiful, and you take out your strap and warm him! And then he goes to get the ball, and the other feller sings out, 'I told you to let that ball alone! Come here, sir! Touch your toes!' So he warms him too; and then we go on all jolly. It's awful fun, I can tell you!”

Master Verdant would think it awful indeed; and, by his own fireside, would recount the deeds of horror to his trembling mother and sisters, whose imagination shuddered at the scenes from which they hoped their darling would be preserved.

Perhaps Master Charley had his own reasons for making matters worse than they really were; but, as long as the information he derived concerning public schools was of this description, so long did Master Verdant Green feel thankful at being kept away from them. He had a secret dread, too, of his friend's superior age and knowledge; and in his presence felt a bashful awe that made him glad to get back from the Rectory to his own sisters; while Master Charley, on the other hand, entertained a lad's contempt for one that could not fire

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 13]

off a gun, or drive a cricket-ball, or jump a ditch without falling into it. So the Rectory and the Manor Green lads saw but very little of each other; and, while the one went through his public-school course, the other was brought up at the women's ap.r.o.n-string.

But though thus put under petticoat government, Mr. Verdant Green was not altogether freed from those tyrants of youth, - the dead languages. His aunt Virginia was as learned a Blue as her esteemed ancestress in the court of Elizabeth, the very Virgin Queen of Blues; and under her guidance Master Verdant was dragged with painful diligence through the first steps of the road that was to take him to Parna.s.sus. It was a great sight to see her sitting stiff and straight, - with her wonderfully undeceptive ”false front” of (somebody else's) black hair, graced on either side by four sausage-looking curls, - as, with spectacles on nose and dictionary in hand, she instructed her nephew in those ingenuous arts which should soften his manners, and not permit him to be brutal. And, when they together entered upon the romantic page of Virgil (which was the extent of her cla.s.sical reading), nothing would delight her more than to declaim their sonorous Arma-virumque-cano lines, where the intrinsic qualities of the verse surpa.s.sed the quant.i.ties that she gave to them.

Fain would Miss Virginia have made Virgil the end and aim of an educational existence, and so have kept her pupil entirely under her own care; but, alas! she knew nothing further; she had no acquaintance with Greek, and she had never flirted with Euclid; and the rector persuaded Mr. Green that these were indispensable to a boy's education. So, when Mr. Verdant Green was (in stable language) ”rising” sixteen, he went thrice a week to the Rectory, where Mr.

Larkyns bestowed upon him a couple of hours, and taught him to conjugate {tupto}, and get over the ~Pons Asinorum~. Mr. Larkyns found his pupil not a particularly brilliant scholar, but he was a plodding one; and though he learned slowly, yet the little he did learn was learned well.

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