The Life of Froude | Page 3

stood near the rectory, is one of the oldest houses in
England, originally built before the Conquest, and completed with great
magnificence in the reign of Richard II. The vast banqueting-room was,
in the nineteenth century, a ruin, and open to the sky. The remains of
the old quadrangle were a treasure to local antiquaries, and the whole
place was full of charm for an imaginative boy. Mr. Champernowne,
the owner, was an intimate friend of the Archdeacon, to whom he left
the guardianship of his children, so that the Froudes were as much at
home in their squire's house as in the parsonage itself. Although most
of his brothers and sisters were too old to be his companions, the group
in which his first years were passed was an unusually spirited and
vivacious one. Newman, who was one of Hurrell's visitors from Oxford,
has described the young girls "blooming and in high spirits," full of
gaiety and charm.*
-- * Newman's Letters and Correspondence, ii. 73. --
The Froudes were a remarkable family. They had strong characters and
decided tastes, but they had not their father's conventionality and
preference for the high roads of life. They were devoted to sport, and at
the same time abounded in mental vigour. All the brothers had the gift
of drawing. John, though forced into a lawyer's office, would if left to
himself have become an artist by profession. The nearest to Anthony in
age was William, afterwards widely celebrated as a naval engineer.
Then came Robert, the most attractive of the boys. A splendid athlete,
compared by Anthony with a Greek statue, he had sweetness as well as
depth of nature. His drawings of horses were the delight of his family;
and when his favourite hunter died he wrote a graceful elegy on the
afflicting event. The influence of his genial kindness was never
forgotten by his youngest brother; but there was a stronger and more
dominating personality of which the effect was less beneficial to a
sensitive and nervous child.
Richard Hurrell Froude is regarded by High Churchmen as an

originator of the Oxford Movement, and he impressed all his
contemporaries by the brilliancy of his gifts. Dean Church went so far
as to compare him with Pascal. But his ideas of bringing up children
were naturally crude, and his treatment of Anthony was more harsh
than wise. His early character as seen at home is described by his
mother in a letter written a year before her death, when he was
seventeen. Fond as she was of him and proud of his brilliant promise,
she did not know what to make of him, so wayward was he and
inconsiderately selfish. "I am in a wretched state of health," the poor
lady explained, "and quiet is important to my recovery and quite
essential to my comfort, yet he disturbs it for what he calls 'funny
tormenting,' without the slightest feeling, twenty times a day. At one
time he kept one of his brothers screaming, from a sort of teasing play,
for near an hour under my window. At another he acted a wolf to his
baby brother, whom he had promised never to frighten again."*
-- * Guiney's Hurrell Froude, p. 8. --
Anthony was the baby brother, and though this form of teasing was
soon given up, the temper which dictated it remained. Hurrell, it should
be said, inflicted severe discipline upon himself to curb his own
refractory nature. In applying the same to his little brother he showed
that he did not understand the difference between Anthony's character
and his own. But lack of insight and want of sympathy were among
Hurrell's acknowledged defects.
Conceiving that the child wanted spirit, Hurrell once took him up by
the heels, and stirred with his head the mud at the bottom of a stream.
Another time he threw him into deep water out of a boat to make him
manly. But he was not satisfied by inspiring physical terror. Invoking
the aid of the preternatural, he taught his brother that the hollow behind
the house was haunted by a monstrous and malevolent phantom, to
which, in the plenitude of his imagination, he gave the name of
Peningre. Gradually the child discovered that Peningre was an illusion,
and began to suspect that other ideas of Hurrell's might be illusions too.
Superstition is the parent of scepticism from the cradle to the gave. At
the same time his own faculty of invention was rather stimulated than

repressed. He was encouraged in telling, as children will, imaginative
stories of things which never occurred.
In spite of ghosts and muddy water Anthony worshipped Hurrell, a
born leader of men, who had a fascination for his brothers and sisters,
though not perhaps of the most wholesome kind. The Archdeacon