every one except my mother and Lea. But the choice of the school to which I was sent at nine years old was very unfortunate. When illness had obliged my Uncle Augustus Hare to leave his beloved little parish of Alton Barnes for Italy, a Rev. Robert Kilvert came thither as his temporary curate—a very religious man, deeply learned in ultra "evangelical" divinity, but strangely unpractical and with no knowledge whatever of the world—still less of the boyish part of it. As Dr. John Brown once said—"The grace of God can do muckle, but it canna gie a man common-sense." Mr. Kilvert was a good scholar, but in the dryest, hardest sense; of literature he knew nothing, and he was entirely without originality or cleverness, so that his knowledge was of the most untempting description. Still his letters to my mother in her early widowhood had been a great comfort to her, and there was no doubt of his having been a thoroughly good parish-priest. He had lately married a Miss Coleman, who derived the strange name of Thermuthis from the daughter of Pharaoh who saved Moses out of the bulrushes, and he had opened a small school at his tiny Rectory of Hardenhuish, or, as it was generally called, Harnish, the estate of the Clutterbucks, near Chippenham in Wiltshire; so my mother, thinking it of far more importance to select "a good man" than "a good master," determined to send me there. How often since have I seen the terrible mistake of parents in "packing off" children to a distant school, to be entirely in the hands of masters of whose practical influence and social competence for their duties they know nothing whatever!
My own experience of Harnish is one of the many instances I have known of how little the character of the head of an establishment affects the members of it, unless his spirituality is backed up by a thorough knowledge of the world. The greater portion of Mr. Kilvert's scholars—his "little flock of lambs in Christ's fold"—were a set of little monsters. All infantine immoralities were highly popular, and—in such close quarters—it would have been difficult for the most pure and high-minded boy to escape from them. The first evening I was there, at nine years old, I was compelled to eat Eve's apple quite up—indeed, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was stripped absolutely bare: there was no fruit left to gather.
I wonder if children often go through the intense agony of anguish which I went through when I was separated from my mother. Perhaps not, as few children are brought up so entirely by and with their parents in such close companionship. It was leaving my mother that I minded, not the going to school, to which my misery was put down: though, as I had never had any companions, the idea of being left suddenly amongst a horde of young savages was anything but comforting. But my nervous temperament was tortured with the idea that my mother would die before I saw her again (I had read a story of this kind), that our life was over, that my aunts would persuade her to cease to care for me—indeed, the anguish was so great and so little understood, that though it is more than fifty years ago, as I write this, I can scarcely bear to think of it.
III
BOYHOOD
1843–1848
| "The more we live, more brief appear |
| Our life's returning stages: |
| A day to childhood seems an year, |
| And years like passing ages." |
| —Thomas Campbell. |
| "Oh if, in time of sacred youth, |
| We learned at home to love and pray, |
| Pray Heaven that early Love and Truth |
| May never wholly pass away." |
| —Thackeray. |
MY mother took me to Harnish Rectory on July 28, 1843. The aspect of Mr. Kilvert, his tall figure, and red hair encircling a high bald forehead, was not reassuring, nor were any temptations offered by my companions (who were almost entirely of a rich middle class), or by the playground, which was a little gravelled courtyard—the stable-yard, in fact—at the back of the house. The Rectory itself was a small house, pleasantly situated on a hill, near an odd little Wrenian church which stood in a well-kept churchyard. We were met at Harnish by Mrs. Pile, who, as daughter of an Alton farmer, was connected with the happiest period of my mother's life, and while I was a prey to the utmost anguish, talking to her prevented my mother from thinking much about parting with me.
One miserable morning Mr. Kilvert, Mrs. Pile, and I went with my mother and Lea to the station at Chippenham. Terrible indeed was the moment when the train came up and I flung myself first into Lea's arms and then into my mother's. Mrs. Pile did her best to comfort me—but … there was no comfort.
Several boys slept in a room together at Harnish. In mine there was at first only one other, who was one of the greatest boy-blackguards I ever came across—wicked, malicious, and hypocritical. He made my life indescribably miserable. One day, however, whilst we were wearily plodding through our morning lessons, I saw a pleasant gentleman-like boy come through the gate, who was introduced to us as Alick MacSween. He was thirteen, so much older than any of the others, and he was very good-looking, at least we thought so then, and we used to apply to him the line in our Syntax—
"Ingenui vultus puer ingenuique pudoris."
It was a great joy to find myself transferred to his room, and he soon became a hero in my eyes. Imagination endowed him with every grace, and I am sure, on looking back, that he really was a very nice boy. Gradually I had the delight of feeling assured that Alick liked me as much as I liked him. We became everything to each other, and shared our "lockers" in school, and our little gardens in play-hours. Our affection made sunshine in the dreariness. My one dread was that Alick would some day like another boy better than he liked me. It happened. Then, at ten years old, life was a blank. Soon afterwards Alick left the school, and a little later, before he was fifteen, I heard that he was dead. It was a dumb sorrow, which I could speak to no one, for no one would have understood it, not even my mother. It is all in the dim distance of the long ago. I could not realise what Alick would be if he was alive, but my mind's eye sees him now as he was then, as if it were yesterday: I mourn him still.
Mr. Kilvert, as I have said, was deeply "religious," but he was very hot-tempered, and slashed our hands with a ruler and our bodies with a cane most unmercifully for exceedingly slight offences. So intense, so abject was our terror of him, that we used to look forward as to an oasis to the one afternoon when he went to his parish duties, and Mrs. Kilvert or her sister Miss Sarah Coleman attended to the school, for, as the eldest boy was not thirteen, we were well within their capacities. The greater part of each day was spent in lessons, and oh! what trash we were wearisomely taught; but from twelve to one we were taken out for a walk, when we employed the time in collecting all kinds of rubbish—bits of old tobacco-pipe, &c.—to make "museums."
To MY MOTHER.
"DARLING MAMA—I like it rather better than I expected. They have killed a large snake by stoning it, and Gumbleton has skinned it, such nasty work, and peged it on a board covered with butter and pepper, and layed it out in the sun to dry. It is going to be stuffed. Do you know I have been in the vault under the church. It is so dark. There are great big coffins there. The boy's chief game is robbers. Give love and 8 thousand kisses to Lea and love to the Grannies. Good-bye darling Mama."
"Frederick Leuis has been very ill of crop. Do you know what that is? I have been to the school-feast at Mr. Clutterbuck's. It was so beautifull. All the girls were seated round little round tables amongst beds of geraniums, heltrope, verbenas, and balm of Gilead. We carried the tea and were called in to grapes and gooseberries, and we played at thread-the-needle and went in a swing and in a flying boat. Good-bye Mamma."
"MY DEAR MAMMA—The