Autobiography of Anthony Trollope | Page 8

able to say
an ill-natured word. Dr. Butler only became Dean of Peterborough, 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 compared to our abode at Harrow Weald. Here my
schooling went on under somewhat improved circumstances. The three
miles became half a mile, and probably some salutary changes were
made in my wardrobe. My mother and my sisters, too, were there. And
a great element of happiness was added to us all in the affectionate and
life-enduring friendship of the family of our close neighbour Colonel
Grant. But I was never able to overcome--or even to attempt to
overcome--the absolute isolation of my school position. Of the
cricket-ground or racket-court I was allowed to know nothing. And yet
I longed for these things with an exceeding longing. I coveted
popularity with a covetousness that was almost mean. It seemed to me
that there would be an Elysium in the intimacy of those very boys
whom I was bound to hate because they hated me. Something of the
disgrace of my school-days has clung to me all through life. Not that I
have ever shunned to speak of them as openly as I am writing now, but
that when I have been claimed as schoolfellow by some of those many
hundreds who were with me either at Harrow or at Winchester, I have

felt that I had no right to talk of things from most of which I was kept
in estrangement.
Through all my father's troubles he still desired to send me either to
Oxford or Cambridge. My elder brother went to Oxford, and Henry to
Cambridge. It all depended on my ability to get some scholarship that
would help me to live at the University. I had many chances. There
were exhibitions from Harrow--which I never got. Twice I tried for a
sizarship at Clare Hall,--but in vain. Once I made a futile attempt for a
scholarship at Trinity, Oxford,--but failed again. Then the idea of a
university career was abandoned. And very fortunate it was that I did
not succeed, for my career with such assistance only as a scholarship
would have given me, would have ended in debt and ignominy.
When I left Harrow I was all but nineteen, and I had at first gone there
at seven. During the whole of those twelve years no attempt had been
made to teach me anything but Latin and Greek, and very little attempt
to teach me those languages. I do not remember any lessons either in
writing or arithmetic. French and German I certainly was not taught.
The assertion will scarcely be credited, but I do assert that I have no
recollection of other tuition except that in the dead languages. At the
school at Sunbury there was certainly a writing master and a French
master. The latter was an extra, and I never had extras. I suppose I must
have been in the writing master's class, but though I can call to mind
the man, I cannot call to mind his ferule. It was by their ferules that I
always knew them, and they me. I feel convinced in my mind that I
have been flogged oftener than any human being alive. It was just
possible to obtain five scourgings in one day at Winchester, and I have
often boasted that I obtained them all. Looking back over half a century,
I am not quite sure whether the boast is true; but if I did not, nobody
ever did.
And yet when I think how little I knew of Latin or Greek on leaving
Harrow at nineteen, I am astonished at the possibility of such waste of
time. I am now a fair Latin scholar,--that is to say, I read and enjoy the
Latin classics, and could probably make myself understood in Latin
prose. But the knowledge which I have, I have acquired since I left
school,--no doubt aided much by that groundwork of the language
which will in the process of years make its way slowly, even through
the skin. There were twelve years of tuition in which I do not remember

that I ever knew a lesson! When I left Harrow I was nearly at the top of
the