Tom Browns School Days | Page 3

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This etext was prepared from the 1905 Thomas Nelson and Sons
edition by Gil Jaysmith

TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS

CHAPTER I
- THE BROWN FAMILY

"I'm the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir, With liberal notions under my
cap." - Ballad
The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the
pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen who are
now matriculating at the universities. Notwithstanding the well-merited
but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all
acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written

and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how
much of its greatness it owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their
quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in
most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and
Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have
won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen's
work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and
Agincourt--with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord
Willoughby--with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and
Dutchmen--with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet,
under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and
Wellington, they have carried their lives in their hands, getting hard
knocks and hard work in plenty--which was on the whole what they
looked for, and the best thing for them--and little praise or pudding,
which indeed they, and most of us, are better without. Talbots and
Stanleys, St. Maurs, and such-like folk, have led armies and made laws
time out of mind; but those noble families would be somewhat
astounded--if the accounts ever came to be fairly taken--to find how
small their work for England has been by the side of that of the
Browns.
These latter, indeed, have, until the present generation, rarely been sung
by poet, or chronicled by sage. They have wanted their sacer vates,
having been too solid to rise to the top by themselves, and not having
been largely gifted with the talent of catching hold of, and holding on
tight to, whatever good things happened to be going--the foundation of
the fortunes of so many noble families. But the world goes on its way,
and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs,
seem in a fair way to get righted. And this present writer, having for
many years of his life been a devout Brown-worshipper, and, moreover,
having the honour of being nearly connected with an eminently
respectable branch of the great Brown family, is anxious, so far as in
him lies, to help the wheel over, and throw his stone on to the pile.
However, gentle reader, or simple reader, whichever you may be, lest
you should be led to waste your precious time upon these pages, I make
so bold as at once to tell you the sort of folk you'll have to meet and put
up with, if you and I are to jog on comfortably together. You shall hear
at once what sort of folk the Browns are--at least my branch of them;

and then, if you don't like the sort, why, cut the concern at once, and let
you and I cry quits before either of us can grumble at the other.
In the first place, the Browns are a fighting family. One may question
their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but about their fight there can be no
question. Wherever hard knocks of any kind, visible or invisible, are
going; there the Brown who is nearest must shove in his carcass. And
these carcasses, for the most part, answer very well to the characteristic
propensity: they are a squareheaded and snake-necked generation,
broad in the shoulder, deep in the chest, and thin in the