Autobiography of Anthony Trollope | Page 5

my father's; but I believe that he had an
idea that money might be made by sending goods,--little goods, such as
pin-cushions, pepper-boxes, and pocket-knives,--out to the still
unfurnished States; and that she conceived that an opening might be
made for my brother Henry by erecting some 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 imposing edifice. My
mother went first, with my sisters and second brother. Then my father
followed them, taking my elder brother before he went to Oxford. But
there was an interval of some year and a half during which he and I
were in 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 friendship
bears and allows hot words. Few brothers have had more of
brotherhood. But in those schooldays he was, of all my foes, the worst.
In accordance with the practice of the college, which submits, or did
then submit, much of the tuition of the younger 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 the manner of that lawgiver. Hang a little boy for stealing apples,
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
me with a big stick. That such thrashings should have been possible at a
school as a continual part of one's daily life, seems to me to argue 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
with me. On this occasion my amusement consisted in wandering about
among those old deserted buildings, and in reading Shakespeare out of

a bi-columned edition, which is still among 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 my fate. My
college 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
some slight 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 sometimes doubted whether among each other they do usually
suffer much, one from the other's cruelty; but I suffered horribly! I
could make no stand against it. I had no friend to whom I could pour
out my sorrows. I was big, and awkward, and ugly, and, I have no
doubt, sulked about in a most unattractive manner. Of course I was
ill-dressed and dirty. But ah! how well I remember all the agonies of
my young heart; how I considered whether I should always be alone;
whether I could not find my way up to the top of that college tower,
and from thence put an end to everything? And a worse thing came
than the stoppage of the supplies from the shopkeepers. Every boy had
a shilling 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 own unwillingness to advance the
money. The loss of a shilling a week would not have been much,--even
though pocket-money from other sources never reached me,--but that
the other boys all knew it! Every now and again, perhaps three or four
times in a half-year, these weekly shillings were given to certain
servants of the college, in payment, it may be presumed, for some extra
services. And now, when it came to the turn of any servant, he received
sixty-nine shillings instead of seventy, and the cause of the defalcation
was