My Life as an Author | Page 6

their parents. If,
however, I may mention my own small experience of this matter,
literary talent, or at all events authorship, is hereditary, especially in
these days of that general epidemic, the "cacoethes scribendi."
* * * * *

I wrote this paper following originally for an American publication;
and as I cannot improve upon it, and it has never been printed in
England, I produce it here in its integrity.
A true and genuine record of what English schools of the highest class
were more than sixty-five years ago cannot fail to have much to interest
the present generation on both sides of the Atlantic; if only because we
may now indulge in the self-complacency of being everyway wiser,
better, and happier than our recent forebears. And in setting myself to
write these early revelations, I wish at once to state that, although at
times necessarily naming names (for the too frequent use of dashes and
asterisks must otherwise destroy the verisimilitude of plain
truth-telling), I desire to say nothing against or for either the dead or the
living beyond their just deserts, and I protest against any charge of
unreasonable want of charity as to my whilom "schools and
schoolmasters." It is true that sometimes I loved them not, neither can I
in general respect their memory; but the causes of such a feeling on my
part shall be made manifest anon, and I am sure that modern parents
and guardians will rejoice that much of my childhood's hard experience
has not been altogether that of their own boys.
I was sent to school much too soon, at the early age of seven, having
previously had for my home tutor a well-remembered day-teacher in
"little Latin and less Greek" of the name of Swallow, whom I thought a
wit and a poet in those days because one morning he produced as an
epitaph on himself the following effusion:
"Beneath this stone a Swallow lies, No one laughs and no one cries;
Where he is gone or how he fares No one knows and no one cares."
At this time of day I suspect this epigram not to be quite original, but it
served to give me for the nonce a high opinion of the pundit who read
with me Cornelius Nepos and Cæsar and some portions of that hopeless
grammar, the Eton Greek, in the midst of his hard-breathing
consumption of perpetual sandwiches and beer.
The first school chosen for me (though expensive, there could not have
been a worse one) was a large mixed establishment for boys of all ages,

from infancy to early manhood, belonging to one Rev. Dr. Morris of
Egglesfield House, Brentford Butts, which I now judge to have been
conducted solely with a view to the proprietor's pocket, without
reference to the morals, happiness, or education of the pupils
committed to his care. All I care to remember of this false priest (and
there were many such of old, whatever may be the case now) are his
cruel punishments, which passed for discipline, his careful cringing to
parents, and his careless indifference towards their children, and in
brief his total unfitness for the twin duties of pastor and teacher. A
large private school of mixed ages and classes is perilously liable to
infection from licentious youths left to themselves and their evil
propensities, and I can feelingly recollect how miserable for nearly a
year was that poor little helpless innocent of seven under the
unrestricted tyranny of one Cooke (in after years a life convict for
crime) who did all he could to pollute the infant mind of the little fag
delivered over to his cruelty. Cowper's Tirocinium well expresses the
situation:--
"Would you your son should be a sot or dunce, Lascivious, headstrong,
or all these at once, Train him in public with a mob of boys, Childish in
mischief only and in noise, Else of a mannish growth and, five in ten,
For infidelity and lewdness, men."
My next school was more of a success; for Eagle House, Brookgreen,
where I was from eight to eleven, had for its owner and headmaster a
most worthy and excellent layman, Joseph Railton. Mr. Railton was
gentle, though gigantic, fairly learned, just and kindly. His school
produced, amongst others eminent, the famous naval author Kingston,
well known from cabin-boy to admiral; there was also Lord Paulet,
some others of noble birth, and the two Middletons, nick-named
Yankees, whom years after I visited at their ruined mansion in South
Carolina after the Confederate War. Through the personal good
influence of honest "Old Joe," and his middle-aged housekeeper, Mrs.
Jones, our whole well-ordered company of perhaps a hundred boys
lived and learned, worked and played purely, and happily together: so
great a social benefactor may a good school