ETON IN THE FORTIES _EJON IN THE FORTIES BY AN OLD COLLEGER (ARTHUR DUKE COLERIDGE) SECOND EDITION REVISED AND ENLARGED WITH NEW ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. TARVEK LONDON RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON publishers in rbinarj to |tj*r JBaj^stg tlu (Queen 1898 [X// rights reserved} DEDICATED TO THE VICE-PROVOST OF KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. PREFACE I AM indebted to two old collegers of my time, Green ma, K.S., and Green- mi, K.S., for their contributions to this volume an Eton scrap- book, no more, no less. The recollections of the last Montem, and of the assistant-masters fifty years ago, are reprints from Blackwoods Magazine and The Churchman. Sir George Elvey's ' Memoirs,' The Windsor Chronicle, and letters from former schoolfellows supplied me with more correct information, where memory and tradition were at fault. My friend, F. Tarver, has assisted me with some of the illustrations. If ' amongst Memory's hoarded treasures ' there be found dross and viii PREFACE rubbish intermixed, I ask the forgiveness of ancient and modern Tugs of the rank and file order to which I belonged. The ideal essay on Shelley's summer after- noon on the Thames originally appeared in the records of the Shelley Society. The Latin couplet under the portrait of Dr. Hawtrey was addressed in the first instance to Dr. Goodall, by Lonsdale, K.S., in 1806; it is equally true of and applicable to the many virtues of one of the best of Goodall's suc- cessors. CONTENTS I. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER AND OF SOME WHO SLEPT THERE FIFTY YEARS AGO I II. THE LIVELY OPPIDAN THE SCHOLARLY OPPIDAN THE HIGH CHURCH OPPIDAN THE GREEN OPPIDAN THE MISCHIEVOUS COLLEGER 84 III. THE FLOODS TULL, THE LOCK-KEEPER 'HOPPY' BATCHELDOR BAGSHAWE, THE FAMOUS SCULLER AN EXCURSUS ON MR. JUSTICE MAULE - I 06 IV. THE CAPTAIN OF THE BOATS AN UNLUCKY CHALLENGE FROM WESTMINSTER SOME SPECIMENS OF ENGLISH PROSE - 127 V. THE FIRST RACE BETWEEN ETON AND WEST- MINSTER A VICTORY AND A DEFEAT ELECTION SATURDAY - - 144 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE vi. MY TUTOR'S DOGS JACK SPARROW, THE WATER- MAN THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT ? S DOGS CHARLEY WISE SPANKIE - 152 VII. ETON CHAPEL ST. GEORGE'S CHAPEL 1 66 VIII. THE PLAYING-FIELDS - - 257 IX. THE PROVOST HEADMASTER UNDER-MASTER - 346 X. MORE ABOUT CRICKET AND MORE ABOUT FIRE- PLACE ETON MASTERS FIFTY YEARS AGO - 419 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LONG CHAMBER - Frontispiece JACK KNIGHT - - To face 23 A FOOTBALL MATCH AT THE WALL - 30 FINMORE - 77 THE TABERNACLE - ,, 171 PLUMPTRE IN THE PULPIT - - 175 SIR GEORGE JOB ELVEY - 191 DR. ARNE - - 2O7 JOHN GRAY, PARISH CLERK - 211 SILLY BILLY - - To fa.CC 213 LORD JUSTICE CHITTY - 262 PICKY POWELL - 273 A TOWN AND GOWN ROW - - 281 OLD TRANT - - 285 SPANKIE - To face 289 BOTT, 'THE HAPPY WARRIOR* - 298 DR. KEATE - 347 DR. HAWTREY - To face 364 ALFRED MYNN - 419 HARRY ATKINS - 429 ETON IN THE FORTIES CHAPTER I. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER AND OF SOME WHO SLEPT THERE FIFTY YEARS AGO. THERE is no exaggeration in saying that some of the best men I have ever known ran a considerable risk of becoming the worst, from the ordeal of Long Chamber, as I remember that famous dormitory, more than fifty years since. Our forefathers, of yore, possibly fared rather worse than their descendants, but ours was a sufficiently stern baptism in the expiring days of Long Chamber ; it was a Spartan training which required some stoicism to put up with, and one not likely to be forgotten by any who survived such a purgatory. The evidence of two old collegers in past genera- tions accords with my own testimony and ex- i ETON IN THE FORTIES periences. I quote a printed statement of Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy, formerly Chief Justice of Ceylon ; my second witness is the late Provost of King's College, Cambridge, whose letter now lies before me. The Chief Justice and the Provost were not given to exaggeration or random statements, and this is their evidence, which confirms in most par- ticulars my own recollections. ' The lads,' says Sir Edward, ' underwent privations that might have broken down a cabin-boy, and would be thought inhuman if inflicted on a galley slave.' Now for the Provost : ' My recollections of Long Chamber date from 1809. My master was a beast and a bully, and the reign of terrorism upon certain occasions was a horror I shall never forget. The following may be an old story to you, but it is not the less true : ' In July, 1826, contemplating matrimony, I went to the University Life Insurance Society for a policy. (It is always good for adminis- trative personages to have a policy.) I went before the board some sixteen men seated at a table covered with green baize with friend Wray at the head. " You are a Fellow RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER of King's, I see, Mr. Okes, from your papers ?" " Yes, sir." " I infer, then, necessarily that you were at Eton and in College?" "Yes, sir." "How long were you in College?" "Eight years." "Where did you sleep?" " In Long Chamber, sir." " All that time ?" "Yes, sir." "We needn't ask Mr. Okes any more questions." And they did not. You may interpret this as you please. I thought it meant, "If you passed the last eight years of your youth in Long Chamber, and are alive at the age of twenty-nine, you are a fairly safe life.'" Long Chamber, seen even at its ' Election Sunday best,' when decked with green boughs, the grimy floor frottt by rug-riding,^ was a * Rug-riding was in fashion for a few days at the end of the summer half. An extemporized sledge made out of the coverlets of the collegers' beds in Long Chamber accommo- dated a single passenger. Strings were attached to either side of the rug ; to these some half dozen boys harnessed themselves, and ran up and down the floor of Long Chamber, dragging the sledge after them. It was a pleasant ride, though very damaging to the 'college clothes,' i.e., fustian or corduroy trousers donned for the sake of economy and for the elegant entertainments of an evening. The old boards took very kindly to the annual polish. ETON IN THE FORTIES rough barrack now and then a chamber of horrors. There was generally one Torquemada amongst the upper ten, and sixth-form tyranny, though disapproved of, remained unchecked. Cruelty is sadly infectious. It is a matter of sixth-form and Long Chamber history that one of the best and kindest men (in after-life) ordered his fag to eat a tallow sandwich, by way of acquiring an extra relish for his own cold mutton at the sixth -form supper -table. I would not unnecessarily hurt the feelings of any old colleger, but one of them hurt mine very considerably, and if he lives and reads my anathema, he will see I have not forgotten him for scoring me heavily with a birch on that part 'which cherubs lack,' and indulging at my cost in other pleasantries of a revolting description. The offence supposed to warrant amateur scourging was that I had escaped the headmaster's triste lignum, often probably as I had deserved it. The captains of Long Chamber, Upper Carter's and Lower Carter's Chamber, were good and merciful, but they winked at the ruffianism of my tormentor, who, as a sixth-form boy, could do as he pleased. It pleased him to steal a birch from RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 5 the headmaster's cupboard ; it pleased him still more to wield the instrument of justice, and rehearse all the formalities of a public execution upon an unoffending victim. I have heard that this light-fingered gentleman was not too successful in after-life. Did a bully by instinct ever make a friend ? I know too well that at Eton, in Hawtrey's time, as in Thring's at Uppingham, 'the bully existed as a species. There were bullies as there are rogue elephants, but they had no fraternity.' The worst of it is that a single bully is more than enough to embitter the life of twenty or thirty boys beneath him. My man was a very active practitioner, with no humanitarian taint in his composition. He had a touch of Jeffreys' humour with his cruelty. After battering his fag, he would indulge in a quotation from the Psalter. ' Moloch,* call me to-morrow morning at six. I myself will awake right early.' I saw the last days of Long Chamber, and * ' Moloch,' alias ' Remphan,' is now a reverend gentle- man who bears a name honoured in Eton annals. I sup- press it as well as that of his master, who might with propriety have borrowed his fag's nicknames. ETON IN THE FORTIES the first of the new buildings, and, in common with others of my unreasoning comrades, I cordially resented the change. Prince Albert laid the foundation-stone of these buildings, and at the function, B. D., our captain in College, addressed him in a Latin oration, which we youngsters, for all its classicality, thought a rather hypocritical performance. We had the most unaccountable prejudices against the Prince, founded on his supposed inability to take headers or dive in the Masters' Weir below Windsor Bridge. His abortive attempts to introduce a new hat for English soldiers, and his abrupt return to Windsor Castle for luncheon, in the middle of a run with the harriers, were high misdemeanours to our thinking. Such unsportsmanlike acts were discussed and condemned, nemine dissentiente. The Prince was as yet a novice in the royal art of laying foundation-stones, opening bazaars, etc., and at the actual moment of using the silver trowel, we were delighted to observe that he had forgotten to take off his gloves (lavender kid, and ' fitting like a second skin '), so that an equerry had to assist his royal master in getting rid of them, bedaubed as RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 7 they were with untempered mortar. ' There goes three-and-six,' we said ; ' serve him right !' Apart from his supposed incapacity as a swimmer, his bad judgment of head-gear, and non-following of hounds, some of us collegers looked on the Prince as a sort of Ahab ' troubling Israel's peace.' We felt instinc- tively that our theatricals in Long Chamber were doomed, likewise our Montem ' sure nights/ and our roaring songs and choruses, which dear old Hawtrey, a few yards off, affected not to hear. The rumour soon spread that Long Chamber was to be cut up into loose horse-boxes. This coming reformation of our lives and morals filled us with dismay. The beams of Long Chamber would cry out against the intended sacrilege ; it was an insult to the college rats, the legitimate or illegitimate descendants of the Hanoverian vermin, whilom pursued or trapped by Person and Goodall. The colleger of the last century must have been an accomplished rat-catcher. Porson was a regular member of the hunt, and possibly may have fingered some of the neck-of-mutton bones which were turned up by cartloads beneath the boards of Long Chamber as ETON IN THE FORTIES recently, Mr. Paul tells us, as 1858. Let no one suppose that the starved eighteenth- century colleger benevolently shared his supper with rats and mice! He used the mutton- bones as a bait to catch the enemy. If the rat was not trapped in a long stocking, set in front of his hole, and solemnly hung at a bedpost afterwards, he carried the sixth-form supper-bone to a cave beneath Long Chamber, which served as an underground larder and receptacle for stolen meats, and there he left the bones as interesting relics to the rats of a coming generation. I talked of Hanoverian rats ; my belief is that Long Chamber rats were of Elizabethan pedigree, real Tudor vermin, rats with purple blood. Well, the fiat had gone forth Long Chamber was to go Delenda est Carthago. We might deprecate, we could not avert the impending sacrilege, so we wrote reams of lachrymose verses, by way of protest against the demolition of the sacred place. Some of us had shivered from the cold there, for the windows were usually broken, and the snow and wind found their way in beneath the heavy old shutters ; but we heard whispers of intended hot-water pipes RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER in the projected new prison, and this was an intolerable outrage. We suddenly discovered that Long Chamber was a holy of holies, a palace of comfort and luxury ; there was nothing too good to be said for it, the home of well- fed, soft-sleeping generations of ' tugs.' So we enlarged in execrable Latin verses on the sweet, undisturbed slumbers enjoyed by our- selves and our fathers before us. Why disturb us, their successors ? Two shocking bad lines have stuck to my memory : ' Horresco referens ! impendet dira ruina, lisdem sub trabibus procubuere patres/ etc. That was our argument. Granted that the Augean stable wanted cleansing, still some very fine fellows had been stalled there. Hereditary dirt, once enjoyed by Lord Cam- den and Stratford Canning, was a savoury legacy we were proud of. We heard talk of a Winchester don who, unused to soap and towels in the days of his youth, declined the Order of the Bath in mature life. He pros- pered, and day by day plumped his unwashed face into velvet cushions in his cathedral, praising the Lord ' because it was so comfort- io ETON IN THE FORTIES able.' What cared he. for the gibe of the Win chester boys ? ' The Reverend the Dean Is not fit to be seen, And his son at thirty Will be just as dirty.' We admired that soapless ecclesiastic, and shed crocodile tears at the prospect of order and cleanliness. We had heard of a very grubby man, but a good enough scholar for all that, who unconsciously expressed his habits in a Greek grammar which he printed and published. In a chapter on verbs, said he : ' Aouw, I wash ; Aouo/ueu, I wash myself (but this is rare).' Why not leave us alone ? Our basins are few, but we have the college-pump, and we can wash overnight if we please. Our appeals to the happy, contented state of primeval collegers were certainly demurrable. They were a rough lot, I doubt not. No fault of theirs, poor lads ! if they were sniffed at by the fastidious Gray, who, heart-whole Etonian as he was, in most respects, is uncommonly hard upon the Founda- tion boys of his time. I possess a parody of his Ode, written in the last century, and a copy of a song, ' The fine old Eton Colleger,' which RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER deathless ditty we sang as a chorus in ' Fire- place ' in my time. The two compositions con- trast rather oddly. I gather from them that the ' fine and old ' one was a shade better off than his grandfather, under very similar conditions. PARODY ON GRAY'S ODE ON ETON COLLEGE, ON A NEARER PROSPECT BY A COLLEGER, 1798. Collegisse juvat. i. YK chambers three, ye foul abodes Which filth and bedsteads line, Where every instant adds fresh loads To Cloacina's shrine ; If gazing on your lofty brow, Or if perchance the expanse below, One scene of dirt my eyes survey, And many a spider drags along Your window-shutter tops among His slowly winding way. 2. My former rooms ah ! sorry change, A Dame, too, born to please, Where once an Oppidan I ranged, A stranger yet to grease. I know my gown when first it flow'd An awkward majesty bestowed, When waving fresh each woolly wing, That worn-out elbows serv'd to hide, Or else to hold unknown, unspied, A loaf or pudding in. 12 ETON IN THE FORTIES 3- Say, almswomen (for you have seen Full many a college loaf, Your perquisites that should have been, To barracks taken off), Who foremost now delights to clear With potent swigs a can of beer Beer that your senses can't enthrall ; Pint after pint you drink in vain, Still sober you may drink again ; You can't get drunk in hall. 4- Strong guts are theirs by mutton fed, Less pleasing when possest, Sheep roasted well-nigh 'fore they're dead, Loins, shoulders, necks, and breasts ; There's knives and forks and plates but few Some white, some brown bread, seldom new, And swipes of malt and wormwood born, Drunk the next day, made overnight To make the rascals slumber light For ' sapping '* in the morn. 5- Alas ! the weekly stipend's doom, Some little debt to pay ; " No chance have they of cash to come, Save on allowance day. Ah ! show them where in ambush stand, To seize their prey, the dunning band, f.e., getting wisdom, sapientia. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 13 None from the schoolyard dares to stray ; Here Gilkes, Polehampton, Coker gape, And Mother Carter looking sharp Observes each customer. 6. Lo ! the Carter's Chamber corps, A horrid troop, are seen ; The barracks ne'er had such before, No razors half so keen. This sharps a fowl, this fetches bread, This bites his nails, this scrubs his head, These in some deeper schemes are hot ; One private runs to fill a can, Another takes the meat in hand, And boils it in a pot. 7- To each his duty all the men The colonel's justice own ; The meat's the major's ; for their pains The privates gnaw the bones. Yet, ah ! why should they wash their face, Or why despise their happy case ? If cleanliness such joy denies Soap might destroy their Paradise No more : where beastliness is bliss 'Tis folly to be nice. Carter's Chamber* had a bad reputation. John Lonsdale, in 1812, writes to Hodgson in * Carter's Chambers were divided into ' Upper and Lower.' The Bishop adopts the singular number in refer- ence to the particular one which he occupied in college days. 14 ETON IN THE FORTIES the usual uncomplimentary style about it : ' Eton looks all lovely, always excepting Carter's Chamber, which is more beastly than ever.' Speaking from my experience as a humble tenant, I admit the impeachment of the fragrance of Carter's Chamber, though I must disclaim the imputation of being one of a 4 horrid troop.' There were five of us in my time, and my brother and I were of the party. Foraging for illicit food was a sporting instinct greatly admired, if it resulted in something for supper. One day after twelve my brother noosed a hare in Windsor Park. It was a sudden act of inspiration and brilliant poach- ing in broad daylight, but he was not hot on a deep-laid scheme. We applauded his perform- ance and jugged poor puss. How good she was without currant-jelly ! A great deal of the last century Ode comes home to the colleger in the first half of the present. It was the change from oppidan life, which is alluded to in the second stanza, that tried the neophyte to the uttermost. With very slight qualifications, I adopt the old colleger's benediction : ' A dame, too, born to please.' I was very happy at my dame's, though damson RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 15 puddings several times a week ruined my taste for that fruit, and an occasional creeping thing in the salad has made me very cautious since boyhood in dealing with green-meat. Acci- dents will happen in the best regulated dames' houses. Ideal banquets, ' nights and suppers of the gods,' are not meant for beardless boys. It takes a full-blown Canon of Durham to invent a 4th of June menu for his Eton guests : POTAGE TANG DE BARNES. Saumon a la Brocas. Sauce Cascade de Boveney. Agneau Roti. Pre Sale de Montem. Canetons. Chateau de Surly. Pommes de Terre") . . Vau Savetier. Petits poisj Pouding a la Brozier. Gelee a la Califano. Fromage Suiche en Bloc. Lapins des Galles aux cendres.* VlNS. Sherry, Hanoverian Vintage, 1738. Champagne, Premier Cru de Christopher. Burgundy, Chateau Botham. There was one beloved college almswornan in my time, Dobby by name, whom we would * /.., Welsh rabbits. These were made by us when we toasted our college cheese under the stove in Hall. The sifting of ashes was very innocent. 16 ETON IN THE FORTIES not have robbed of her perquisites for a king- dom. She captained some half-dozen old female pensioners, who sat in a row, basins in hand, outside Hall, waiting for our mutton relics and broken meats, after we had picked the bones. We all liked Dobby, a thoroughly sympathetic old lady, who ate her scrag of mutton with simplicity of heart and very few teeth. I suppose that Long Chamber was called ' barracks,' and the tenants thereof were ' colonels, majors, and privates,' by way of nursing the military spirit evoked by the con- stant threat of the invasion of England. Or I hazard another guess the parody may have been written in or about Montem year, when 'colonels,' 'majors,' and 'privates' abounded in the ranks of the boys who figured in that pageant. In the sixth stanza of the Ode occurs the name of Polehampton. I believe that Henry Polehampton, my old friend and school- fellow, was descended from a family which, in the course of its history, had experienced many changes of fortune. In years gone by it had supplied a county with High Sheriffs, and in modern days a Polehampton, Fellow of King's, RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 17 was private tutor to Isaac Williams, a distin- guished Harrovian, who greatly respected his teacher. Therefore the hybrid pentameter line, ' Hot rolls and butter Billy Polehampton habet,' which survived as a tradition to my time, must have marked an interval in the less prosperous days of the family. Whatever his ancestors, near or remote, may have been, no Eton colleger of my time lived or died more nobly than Henry Polehampton. I shall say more of him anon. In the Lower School passage, near the entrance into the schoolyard, my friend carved his own name and the names of several of his comrades / that of my friend Brocklebank (notus in fratres animi paterni] among them. Let no Vandal obliterate this record ! We collegers were not actually sworn to secrecy in respect of the mysteries enacted in Long Chamber. A line and a half from Juvenal was printed in large black letters over the entrance-door. It ran thus : ' Nil dictu fsedum.visuve hsec limina tangat Intra quse puer est.' 2 iS ETON IN THE FORTIES And this was supplemented by a motto on the door of Lower Chamber : ' Ne fidos inter amicos Sit, qui dicta foras Eliminet.' It had a binding force which the least willing amongst us invariably recognized. I never heard the name of the colleger who selected this Horatian warning, but it was a good choice, as texts go, for we knew our Horace, as the Westminster boys knew their Terence, pretty well by heart. We were overdosed with that poet. I have heard Lord Tennyson say that he, too, suffered in the same way, and he quoted Byron's line, ' Then, farewell ! Horace, whom I hated so,' with approval. ' I am sorry,' added the late Laureate, ' that they have made me a school- book at Harrow ; the boys will talk of " that brute Tennyson." I doubt it. As for blabbing, the Statute of Limitations no longer applies ; after half a century, ' faithful friends ' may blab with impunity, and the muzzle once removed, we can ' eliminate ' without fear of consequences. The orthodox number of collegers was RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER ig seventy ; I remember in one year about half that number, and cannot wonder at it. There were fearless Spartan mothers in Windsor who, for economy's sake, launched their sons into Long Chamber, there to become hewers of wood, drawers of water, restless, fitful sleepers. A chance of Montem or King's was not to be despised, so there was always a small Eton and Windsor-born contingent in College. I found, in my scholar's days at King's, an old fossil Fellow, still living, Pote by name, a contempo- rary of Sir John Patteson, who left Eton in 1805. He was a curious, but not uncommon, specimen of the Eton tradesman's successful son. His father had been an Eton bookseller, who did a good business in ' description paper, derivation paper, letter-paper, wax.' (That was the invariable tag to the stationery ' order ' signed by my dear old tutor.) At King's we were not very proud of our Pote, whose one mission in life seemed to be the shooting of partridges a duty limited to about four months in the year. His Long Chamber education had made him neither useful nor ornamental. At one time he and Billy Hunt, a Senior Fellow, once Recorder of Bury, and a member of the 2 2 20 ETON IN THE FORTIES Norfolk Circuit, took to very frequent potations in our Combination room. They were a doubt- ful credit to their school or their College, and the better sort were decidedly shy of ' potus et exlexj as they were called. The ' Up Town ' collegers, presumably not born in the purple, were heavily handicapped from the first. The sons of Eton masters were received on equal terms, but the same privi- leges were not conceded to the sons of Eton or Windsor doctors or solicitors, royal servants, or successful tradesmen. The poor lad was pointed at ; he began his career as a pariah, '. . . Niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto.' For some mysterious reason, the farther away from Eton a boy lived, the more he was respected ; the nearer to Eton, the less he was esteemed accordingly. It was thought a brilliant piece of wit on Election Monday to ask the Windsor-bred boy, ' By what train are you going home ?' the questioner knowing perfectly well that the lad's parents lived just beyond Windsor Bridge. This biting jest was supposed to come with extra force and acidity if hurled by a Scotchman or Northumbrian, RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 21 whose long journeys were supposed to indicate long purses and ancestral acres. When the collegers were short in number (I remember less than forty, all told), the few lower boys amongst them were in constant demand as fags, and a stray, unconscious oppidan, hailed from a window in Long Chamber, was a god- send to the overtaxed Gibeonites in College. A small colleger would often assist as an extra cook and scullion. Our masters were growing lads with healthy appetites, and a competent fag would smuggle fish, kidneys, sausages, and lard into Long Chamber for their use and consumption. These Delicatessen were gener- ally purchased some time before they were finally landed. I remember one old colleger with whom St. Vitus's dance was a trick, not an infirmity, and it was usually most active at the time of five o'clock lesson in school, if he had successfully stowed away in the pockets of his gown the raw kidneys or steaks intended for his late supper. The glimpse of the raw meat, provided by Thumbwood the butcher, the savoury prospect of rognons a la broche, set St. Vitus going, and my friend addressed the kidney thus : ' Oh, oh ! my little kidney, 22 ETON IN THE FORTIES I've got you now,' in such loud and jubilant tones that Hawtrey, overhearing the unwonted apostrophe, exclaimed : ' Are you mad ?' Our cooking was primitive, and the kitchen battery adapted by the Long Chamber Soyer was peculiar and fragile. Long strips detached from the coarse coverlets of our beds served as a suspending line for a duck, or a pike caught in Fellows' Pond or Perch Hole. The roasting and frying were simple processes, but the bird, I am afraid, was not always honestly come by, and on one occasion a farmer at Slough complained to our head -master that three of his ducks had been lamed by the slings and stones of fourth-form marauders. The school was summoned, and the head- master addressed us in the following terms : ' In the centre of our great Metropolis, on an artificial lake of water, surrounded with rare exotic shrubs, birds of an exquisite hue and plumage are to be seen daily. They lay their eggs, and rear their young, and float about in perfect security. But a mile from the most celebrated seminary in England, Eton boys- fourth - form boys, it is true, but still Eton boys have forgotten themselves, and three " " ^^ I" ' ' JACK KNIGHT, alias JOHN K(NOX), Who drew out molle feretrum (mild beer) at the Christopher. ' He was a man, take him for half and half I shall not look upon his like again. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 23 ducks have had their legs broken.' [Un- quenchable laughter.] Hawtrey : ' This is no faffing matter. Finmore, shut that door !' Our chief amateur cook in College taught us, his underlings and assistants, how to prod the sausage or beefsteak with a fork, before trusting it to the pan. We watched the exuding juices with quite a professional pride, and sniffed them, as Thackeray's Alderman the coming turtle, ' with a hideous furtive relish.' The fags, on highly festive occasions, drank beer from a small portable cask, called, for what reason I know not, a 'governor.' Our masters were addicted to more fiery potations, con- sisting of brandy and cloves, or rum and shrub, smuggled into Long Chamber, with Jack Knight's* connivance, from the Chris- topher Inn. A very fatal concoction was that shrub punch aforesaid, brewed in the few wash- hand basins allotted to the upper boys, for the lower boy collegers washed and dressed, every morning, in rooms hired in Eton or Windsor. The statutory rights of the collegers had been ignored for years by the Provost and Fellows. * Jack Knight, a good-natured Falstaff kind of man, pre- sided over the tap at the Christopher. 24 ETON IN THE FORTIES Henry VI. never could have intended the poor scholars to pay for their own towels and Windsor soap ; but washing was a formidable extra to the long-suffering parents, for it meant the compulsory hiring of a room outside the College precincts, and many incidental expenses. To me the escape from Long Chamber was a daily luxury, and I look fondly back on my room at Webber's, over Barnes Pool Bridge, as a city of refuge after twelve and after four. There I breakfasted in comfort, once a week, royally on twelve sausages, ' because it was allowance day,' and the hebdomadal shilling exactly covered the cost of the Monday's feast. That hired room indirectly fostered a loyalty in its tenant to all and everyone connected with the dear good Queen, for I could get up from the breakfast - table and watch our future King taking the air in an open carriage, with his governess, Lady Lyttelton, with one attendant, and a single outrider. Such occa- sions were frequent, and we were considerate enough not to waken the Heir Apparent from his morning slumber, reserving the full force of our lungs for his royal mother, whenever and wherever she appeared within hailing RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 25 distance. Our boisterous loyalty must have tried the young Queen's nerves, though they had plenty of practice, for she and her Ministers repeatedly drove through Eton to the Castle, and it was our custom to run alongside the royal carriage, as near as the cavalry escort would allow us, and hurl our stormy cheers in her face. There exists a letter from John Coleridge Patteson to his parents, describing the tumul- tuous loyalty and audacity of the Eton boys at the time of the Queen's wedding. Of course that was a very exceptional day, but I have witnessed many similar scenes, on occasions less conspicuous and important than our Queen's marriage, and shall be forgiven for quoting the language of my beloved relative, who, as a. boy of twelve years of age, joined in the ' Eton shouts' which greeted the royal pair. 'In College, stretching from Hexter's to Mother Spier's, was a magnificent representation of the Parthenon ; there were three pillars, and a great thing like this ' (a not over successful sketch of a pediment), ' with the Eton and Royal Arms in the middle, and "Gratulatur Etona Victorise et Alberto." It cost ^"150, and there were 5,000 lamps hung on it. 26 ETON IN THE FORTIES Throughout the whole day we all of us wore large white bridal favours and white gloves. Towards evening the clods got on Long Walk Wall, and as gentle means would not do, we were under the necessity of knocking some over, when the rest soon jumped off. How- ever, Fred and myself declared we would go right into the quadrangle of the Castle, so we went into the middle of the road and formed a line. Soon a rocket (a signal that the Queen was at Slough) was let off, and then some Life Guards came galloping along, and one of them ran almost over me, and actually trod on Fred's toe, which put him into dreadful pain for some time. Then came the Queen's carriage, and I thought the College would have tumbled down with the row. The cheering was really tremendous. The whole 550 fellows all at once roared away. The Queen and Consort nodding and bowing, smiling, etc. Then Fred and I made a rush to get up behind the Queen's carriage, but a dragoon with his horse almost knocked us over. So we ran by the side, as well as we could, but the crowd was so immensely thick we could not get on as quick as the Queen. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 27 We rushed along, knocking clean over all the clods we could, and rushing against the rest, and finally Fred and myself were the only Eton fellows that got into the quadrangle. As we got there, the Queen's carnage was going away. You may fancy that we were rather hot, running the whole way up to the Castle, besides the exertion of knocking over the clods, and knocking at doors as we passed ; but I was so happy !' The traditionary privilege of bawling at the royal carriage, whenever it appeared on the way to or returning from Slough, seemed to astonish Prince Albert, in common with many foreign visitors, whom I have often seen dazed and bewildered at an Eton ovation. They don't do that sort of thing at Bonn or Leipzig. The German Hock, Hoch! is a feeble thing. Our great capacity for noise impressed all foreigners, our Eton French master included ; and under the word ' shout ' in his big dictionary he paid us a well - deserved compliment by appending this sentence : ' I never heard any- thing approaching an Eton shout ' ' fe riai jamais entendu rien qui puisse se comparer aux vivats des Sieves d' Eton? 28 ETON IN THE FORTIES Neither he nor anyone else, except ' the fine old Eton colleger,' ever heard anything re- sembling- the cacophonous shouts in Long Chamber which formed our declamatory chorus in the so called college songs that cheered our winter evenings in ' Fireplace.' I give some specimens of those elegant choruses, half-spoken, half-sung, and amongst these ' The fine old Eton Colleger ' must have the first place. His apotheosis dates, I expect, from some time in the thirties of the present century. I. THE FINE OLD ETON COLLEGER. I'll sing you a fine old college song that was made by an old tug's pate Of a fine old Eton Colleger whose chamber was his estate, And who kept up this old mansion at a bountiful old rate, With an old door-keeper to put down the young tugs that were late, Chorus : Like a fine old Eton Colleger, One of the olden time. His college desk, if desk he had, was plentifully filled With Greek and Latin grammars, over which much ink was spilled ; And there his worship sat in state, in good old ' college clothes,' And quaffed his cup of good old swipes to warm his old tug nose, Like a fine old Eton Colleger, One of the olden time. 3- When winter old brought frost and cold, he'd freely drink with all, And though so very, very old, he could outdrink them all ; Nor was the wand'ring lower boy forgetful of his call, For while he hided all the great, he hided all the small, Like a fine old Eton Colleger, One of the olden time. But tugs, like dogs, must have their day, and years rolled swiftly past, The resignation man proclaimed, this tug must leave at last. He mounted on his four-in-hand, drove off without a sigh, A solemn silence reigned around, and a tear bedewed each eye For this fine old Eton Colleger, One of the olden time. 5- Now times are changed, and we are changed, and Keate has passed away, Still college hearts and college hands maintain old Eton's sway; 30 ETON IN THE FORTIES And though our chamber is not filled as it was filled of yore, We still will beat the oppidans at bat and foot and oar, Like the fine old Eton Collegers, Those of the olden time. II. Put your shirt on, If you have one, If you haven't one Put your collar on ; Stick your tail up, Sip your ale up, Drive the nail up, Go along ! III. Brown bread all the week, pudding on a Sunday, Because it is allowance day, porter on a Monday ; L, L, L, L.* (Chorus fortissimo ad libitum?) IV. Have you seen football to-day ? Where, boys, where ? 'Twas kicking into goals, boys ; there, boys, there. (Sung) Collegers and sweet oppidans ! Oppidans and sweet collegers. (Shouted) Hurrah ! Collegers ! You stink like Russian bears ! * All these ' L's ' stood for ' Lubberly,' ' Lazy,' ' Lousy,' ' Liberty,' and used to rouse great anger at the Liberty supper-table. ' Liberty ' consisted of six boys immediately below the sixth-form ; they had a table to themselves, and when they heard the L, L, L, L shouted, they used to hurl a volley of coals at the singers. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 31 Why we told it out to the four quarters of the globe that we were so inodorous, I know not, but we delighted in emphasizing the fact. V. FOOTBALL SONG : A FRAGMENT. Now football is over and finished the game, Fol de rol, etc. ; For awhile, my brave fellows, forget that you're lame, Fol de rol, etc. ; Your shins won't get better for making a fuss, So I see no objection to having a lush, Fol de rol, etc. Nor filled with more pleasure was Wellington's brain, Fol de rol, etc., When he saw England's banner float over the main, Fol de rol, etc., Than the heart of each colleger will be replete When he hears the glad tidings of Snivey's* defeat ; Then fill up to Joynes and then t'other Yonge, A very good couple to end this here song ! Fol de rol, etc. VI. MR. SIMPKINS. Mr. Simpkins lived at Leeds, And he had a wife beside, Who because she wore the pantaloons She thought that she must ride ; * Or whoever happened to be the captain of the oppidan eleven. 32 ETON IN THE FORTIES So she axed him for a horse, and He yielded to her folly, ' For, you know, I'm always mollified By you, my dearest Molly.' Fol de rol, de rol, de rol, de rol de ray. 2. This horse he stood on six legs, As I will prove to you : For he lifted up his forelegs, And still he stood on two. Mrs. Simpkins tumbled off, And her loving spouse averred, ' Oh, my lamb's as dead as mutton, for She cannot speak a word.' Fol de rol, etc. 3- So he put her in a coffin, And bade them nail her fast ; And in funeral array to The parish church they passed. Says he to the pall-bearers, ' Pray take it at your leisure ; For why, my dearest fellows, make A trouble of a pleasure ?' Fol de rol, etc. At night a resurrection-man Resolved the corpse to raise ; So with pick-axe oped the coffin, And on the fair one gazed. 33 The voice awoke the lady. ' What, In Heaven's name,' says she, ' Are you doing with that pickaxe ?' ' What D'you axe about ?' says he. Fol de rol, etc. 5- ' Pray make haste, ma'am, and die, for I have no time to spare.' ' If I do, sir, I'll be hanged, sir !' Cried out the angry fair. ' Don't you see I'm sitting up ?' ' Why, I cannot say you lie ; But if buried people live, Resurrection-men must die.' Fol de rol, etc. 6. So up she jumped, he after her, And to the stable hied, Where she found her spouse caressing The horse whereof she died. Then in came neighbour Homer ; Says he, 'I'll buy your beast, If you think 'twill do for my wife As it did for the deceased.' Fol de rol, etc. 7- ' Oh no ! ! cried Mr. Simpkins, ' I cannot take your pelf, Nor sell a beast that promises Such profit to myself ; 34 ETOX IN THE FORTIES For though it killed my first wife, At that I am not vexed ; As I intend to wed again, I'll keep it for my next.' Fol de rol, etc. 8. ' You wretch !' cried Mrs. Simpkins, And seized him by the hair. ' And now disown your lawful wife, You villain, if you dare ! I'm neither dead nor buried, And you cannot marry two, And though you lived to bury me, I'll live to bury you." Fol de rol, etc. 9- Mr. Simpkins turned round, And beheld, alas ! alack ! A sturdy resurrection-man, Awaiting with a sack. He axed him what he wanted. ' Such a loving pair,' he said, 1 Can never live together, so I'm waiting for the dead.' Fol de rol, etc. 10. The digger looked grave, but His words came well in season ; And though told by me in rhyme, yet They brought the pair to reason. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 35 Mr. Simpkins kissed his wife. ' I'm yours till death,' he cried ; ' But when, my dearest Molly, will You take another ride ?' Fol de rol, etc. College songs died hard, but an attempt to resuscitate them in the new buildings was promptly suppressed by the master in College, my revered friend, the Rev. C. J. Abraham, lately a Bishop in New Zealand. He was quite right ; they were, with a very few excep- tions, not worth keeping, and only served to perpetuate a vicious taste. I heard, however, accidentally, of a ludicrous revival at Queen's College, Oxford, of 'Johnnie Coke, he had a gray mare,' under rather amusing circumstances. A superannuated colleger, of the name of Moffat, held a scholarship at Queen's College, in the days when Dr. Thomson, late Archbishop of York, was Provost. Some practical joker in the University had circulated a false report that Moffat numbered, amongst other gifts and accomplishments, that of an exquisite tenor voice, which had been assiduously cultivated, and would prove to be a fortune to its possessor. This canard obtained wide credence, and 32 reached the ears of no less a person than Dr. Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. At a ' gaudy ' feast at Queen's, the young Bishop was asked as the chief guest at the Fellows' table. He sat next to Dr. Thomson, the Provost, and after dinner questioned his host as to whether he was aware of a coming Rubini amongst the scholars, and was there a young man of the name of Moffat dining at the scholars' table ? The Provost was surprised at the Bishop's superior information. He had heard nothing of the scholar's vocal accomplishments, but would call upon him at once to give the com- pany a taste of his quality. A message accord- ingly was sent from the high table, to the effect that the Provost hoped Mr. Moffat would favour the company with a song. Poor Moffat a thoroughly good-natured fellow was about as musical as the inebriate gentleman who declared that he couldn't distinguish ' Pop goes the Queen ' from ' God save the weasel.' He blushed and protested, but thought it churlish at Christmas time not to take up the unex- pected challenge and to grant the strange request. ' I only know one song,' he said. ' You shall have it, if you like.' And, recalling RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 37 the ancient strain in Long Chamber, he roared out : ' Johnnie Coke, he had a gray mare, Her legs were long and her tail was bare, Riddle dum, riddle dum, rido.' The Provost applauded very faintly ; S. Oxon's information should have been tested before Moffat ventured on a solo. Old Wykehamists are still to be found who defend ' funding ' as a wholesome form of chastisement ; they will never bring me round to their opinion. Eton borrowed many of the good customs, and some of the bad, from the older foundation of Winchester. Amongst the bad, I reckon a traditional connivance at tyranny, in which upper boys, armed with a little brief authority, could, with impunity, indulge. I do not admire even a partial and limited power of corporal punishment vested in the sixth-form of certain schools, and I think that any sixth-form is in a bad way if it cannot enforce discipline amongst the lower boys with- out a cane, and a traditional license to use it. This conviction was forced upon me in my first year as an Eton colleger. My tormentor operated on other subjects besides myself, and 38 ETON IN THE FORTIES one evening took to battering a friend of mine about the face and head so savagely, that the poor lad was kept in bed for days, until his bruises were healed. I was a witness of that performance, and shall not forget it to my dying day. I marvelled at the sixth-form boys at their supper-table, conscious of all the brutality going on, and never lifting a finger to interfere with their comrade's all-licensed cruelty. The chief executioner was safe safe from the vengeance of his fellows, who dared not interfere with the exercise of his power ; safe from the higher authorities, who must have screened such iniquity, from the fear of a public exposure of the system. A more humane man never lived than Dr. Hawtrey, but I am con- vinced that he shrank from investigating the case ; I suppose for no other reason than that he had been bullied in his time, and emerged none the worse for the purgatory ; yet in public and private he was an eloquent champion of justice and kindness. I remember his sending for me one evening, to invoke my authority, as a sixth-form boy, on behalf of a lad whose notorious oddity and awkwardness seemed to mark him out as a butt for all professional RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 39 bullies. ' They used to call Shelley " mad Shelley," ' he said. . ' My belief is, that what he had to endure at Eton made him a perfect devil.' On one of the rare occasions when our headmaster was allowed to address us in chapel, he enlarged on the subject of the remorse which he had known to haunt in after-life the memories of men who had used their powers at school cruelly and capriciously. Never were truer words uttered never was a message more faithfully delivered on behalf of the timid, the eccentric, and the unsociable, whose young lives can be made so miserable by an arbitrary exercise of power. ' By wanton abuse of authority ' (said he), ' you may excite in the minds of the boys beneath you a lasting sensa- tion of bitterness towards yourselves, which may, in spite of better feelings, sometimes be recalled in after-life. This will be the case with gentler natures, on whom injustice falls more painfully ; but when you have to do with rougher and harder tempers, an injury which may be forgotten towards you will be treasured up as an example ; and there are many who, at a later day, may suffer, from those whom you have roughly or unjustly treated, all and 40 ETON IN THE FORTIES worse than you ever inflicted, your example being pleaded as an ample excuse ; and then v you may depend on it, that to many men who, in after-life, have seen their error, who have become kind and Christian-like in their deport- ment, and use any authority which they may possess in their new condition as if they were well aware under Whose eyes they were acting you may depend upon it that to such men, in their solitary hours, the recollection of such youthful errors is a frequent source of very painful and unavailing regret. There is not one of them who would not undergo all the little troubles a hundred times repeated, which he thought to save himself by these petty tyrannies, ' Turno tempus erat, magno quum optaverit emptum Intactum Pallanta. ..." though the day of immediate vengeance is long past, though the injured has pardoned him, and the rest of the world looks on him as if he had never offended. But, then, he knows what may have been may even now be the con- sequence of his boyish caprice, when perhaps at the time he never meant harm, but yet did RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 41 enduring harm.' Assistant masters as well as catechumens warmed to the preacher, whose memories made him unconsciously eloquent ; and after the lapse of fifty years and more since that address was delivered, I heard a famous teacher say that the Virgilian quotation was, in his judgment, the perfection of illustra- tion. No one was better fitted to speak on such a subject than our headmaster. He had suffered himself and in after-life had heaped kindness on the head of the man who had been a terror to him in boyhood. No Eton man can mistake the pathetic truth of our head- master's language, with the memories of Shelley and Sidney Walker still fresh in his mind. ' . . . These are errors connected with authority ; there are others which belong to mere strength of body, and these are more oppressive, more frequent, and always more mortifying to the sufferer. The objects of such kind of ill-usage are not those over whom there is any lawful or conventional right ; they are the weak, the timid, the eccentric, and the unsociable. Some- times those who have none of these failings, but who, from some peculiarity of character, are not acceptable to all, who are nevertheless 42 ETON IN THE FORTIES capable of warm friendship, who are even possessed of no common mental powers which might be expanded into great and public use- fulness, but which may be also compressed and concentrated in a sensitive mind, till they waste and devour it, till they lead to misanthropy, or perhaps to the more fatal error of doubting the justice of Providence, because- man is unjust ; of madly imagining that Christianity itself is a fable, because those who call themselves Christians have acted, in pure recklessness, as if they were heathens. Two such I knew in other days one of them when I was too young to feel and understand what I do understand now. Both of them are long since gone to their account. The talents of the first, how- ever abused, earned for him a reputation which will probably not perish while our language shall be spoken. But his life here was miser- able from this kind of injustice, and if his mind took a bias leading him to error which the Almighty may forgive ; for He is all merciful, and makes allowance for His creatures which we in our self-approving severity seldom make they who remember those days well know how that mind was tortured, and how much the RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 43 wantonness of persecution contributed to pervert its really noble and amiable qualities. The other was known to a smaller circle, and was mercifully saved from the more grievous error with which the former sank into his untimely grave. But he, too, suffered as none ought to have suffered, and owed in a great degree the ills of a wayward and profitless life, though he was possessed of mental powers hardly in- ferior to those of any of his contemporaries, to unkind treatment he received as a boy from those who could not understand or appreciate him. To others who had the sense and humanity to take a different course with him, he clung with affectionate fondness till he sank, hardly regretted and almost unknown, to a less untimely and yet early grave.' The allusion to William Sidney Walker has for me a pathetic interest, for that historical victim of permanent and unrelenting persecu- tion shared with Hawtrey himself a rare mag- nanimity towards his tormentors, and not only forgave them, but in after-life numbered Eton among his ' Goshen spots, Aye bright with spiritual sunshine.' 44 ETON IN THE FORTIES Walker, a born scholar, who, at the instance of Sir James Mackintosh, turned a page of the Court Guide into Greek verse, has recorded some of his few consolations in Eton days. ' My ode on Waterloo ' (he .writes) ' has received the honour of great approbation from the Duke of Wellington, which makes me stand five inches and a half higher.' Another crumb of comfort was the fact of his having shaken hands with the King of Prussia and Platoff, and he actually succeeded in touching the flap of Blucher's coat. He was so touched himself that he adds in a letter : ' I shall have this engraved on my tombstone.' His feelings must have been too deep for tears, when Marshal Vorwarts kissed Mrs. Keate before the whole school, who loudly cheered that act of gallantry. Mercifully, there was a limit to the penal servitude imposed on every new colleger, and if as was my own case he was in the fifth- form, during his noviciate in college, one year was the period of probation. A good deal may be done in twelve months to break the heart and maim the life of a boy, though he may have spirit enough to round and trample on his tormentors. One such case came under RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 45 my observation. I do not mention the names of my contemporaries in College who are still living, but a Bishop on the bench will forgive me nay, he has already forgiven me for reminding him, as I did on the day of his consecration, of the fact that I once entreated him to reconsider his resolve to write to his mother, begging her to remove him from Eton, rather than submit to the humiliations practised on him in Long Chamber, and how reluctantly he adopted my advice, and thanked me for it afterwards. It was a sore trial to my friend, for he had known, as a fifth-form oppidan, the sweets of power, and had wielded it generously. The sudden change to Russian serfdom had well-nigh spoilt his whole career ; the near wreck of so valuable a life often occurs to my memory. His taskmasters called the new tug 'a Jew,' and treated him accordingly, spitting on his gaberdine very plentifully, rolling him in the snow, after evening supper in hall, holding him under the college pump, to assist his digestion of the cold scrag of mutton, moistened with swipes from a tin ' tot,' and practising on him other pleasantries, not easily forgotten 46 ETON IN THE FORTIES by the unoffending victim. Under these ordeals, cheerfulness and equanimity were required of us. We were expected to copy Sir Thomas More, and to speed merrily to our various punishments. Did not each executioner of the Jew, like Izaak Walton's ' Piscator ' baiting his hook with a live frog, ' handle him as though he loved him ' ? The forms of torture were varied and peculiar. ' Pricking for Sheriff' was a curious operation. The victim was laid across the lap of the chief executioner, face downwards, and into a very tightened and thin surface of small-clothes the assistant execu- tioners ran pins, warning the patient that if he screamed louder than his predecessor he would be elected Sheriff and amerced in a bag of walnuts. I forget how I comported myself under this irritating ordeal, but I managed to escape the shrievalty, by a feeble effort to stifle a natural cry. The pin business was founded on the time-honoured process, recurring at the Law Courts every November, when three or four names of Sheriffs in posse for each county are agreed upon at the Court of the Lord Chief Justice of England. After that, the Queen, at a Privy Council, pricks RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 47 with a golden pin, driving it into the page opposite the first effective name on the list. The walnut penalty is a family secret which must not be divulged. ' Seeing the stars ' or ' turning up ' had nothing to do with astronomical observation. Interpreted by the college Torquemadas, it meant that they sweet creatures would ' out- watch the Bear ' until the Jews were sound asleep in their beds. That was their time for diversion, as by twos and threes they swiftly pulled out from the wall every bed tenanted by a snoring and unconscious Hebrew. ' The wretch in bed was warned to put his head under the pillow (which was attached to the mattress), then the bed was quickly pulled out and turned upon end, the head undermost. The movement was risky, and I have known a fellow much hurt by letting his head project at the side. It took a strong brute to draw out and turn up the heavy bed in a workmanlike manner. The patient was not jerked out ; he was simply left, with his head undermost, and his other end or ends uppermost in the doubled-up mattress and bed- clothes, to wriggle out sideways as best he 48 ETON IN THE FORTIES could, shove his bed back and make it again. A second upset was never permitted on the same night. It was certainly a dangerous business. An old friend ot mine, with a vivid recollection of the humours of Long Chamber, used to think Lower Chamber was the nether- most hell. There the Jews were mustered on their first appearance, and told off to their respective masters ; there the sixth-form supped ; there contraband stuff was handed in from Weston's Yard through the windows of the studies. There, too, was a murderous hori- zontal bar between two of the oak pillars, and a pair of ramshackle ropes suspended for gymnastics or torture of some sort. Lower Chamber, as an antiquity, was the most in- teresting of the four places. My friend had a horror of it, and stuck to the upper regions.' Less pleasant and more dangerous was the old-fashioned tossing in a blanket, an opera- tion which was said to have disfigured my Cambridge tutor, Rowland Williams, for life. That brilliant and combative Welshman, who would have fought any one of his tormen- tors, had retaliation been allowable, was a historical victim to one of the amusements common in Long Chamber. ' Why is Taffy's RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 49 head so like a top ?' was asked by one of our scholars at King's, the answer being : ' Why, don't you know about their letting him drop from the blanket in Long Chamber ?' That was the solution. The accident certainly did not affect his brain power. Quite recently I have come upon the real version of the catastrophe, as described by the Rev. J. Wilder, Williams's tutor. ' Rowland Williams shared the fate of all others ; but being small and of light weight, or more probably from some awkwardness or mismanagement in the officiating party, after the usual words, ' " Ibis ab excusso missus ad astra sago," he was thrown high into the air, and in a slanting direction, so that instead of falling straight down into the blanket, he fell with his head on the corner of a heavy iron-bound oak bedstead, such as was used in olden times, the result of which was that he was completely scalped. He was immediately conveyed to his dame's, and the surgeon was quickly in attendance. By a merciful providence it was found that neither was the skull fractured, nor was there concussion of the brain ; indeed, beyond the pain of having the scalp sewed 4 50 ETON IN THE FORTIES on again, and the natural irritation of the wound, he did not suffer at all, either at the time or in after-life.' The Rev. R. W. Essington, a friend of Williams and a witness of the scene, adds : 'Not one of those who stood round the bed expected any result except immediate death, and the alarm bell at the upper end of Long Chamber was rung in the greatest consternation. Happily the effects were not so serious as they appeared to be, but he remained under the doctor's hands for many weeks, and tossing in a blanket was never repeated whilst I remained at Eton.' Taffy was from first to last a 'dimicatory man.' His friendship with Essington began with a fight in the Playing Fields, and that friend- ship, cemented in blood, was never broken afterwards. We were fond and proud of our Taffy at King's, though I for one deplored his skirmishes with bishops and authorities. We saw him very rarely after he left Cambridge for Lampeter. I remember his preaching the University sermon in King's Chapel on the text 'After the way that they call heresy,' and old Shilleto bursting into guffaws behind his red bandana. On the night before^the collegers' and oppi- RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 51 dans' football match there was a curious and, as far as we Hebrews were concerned, revolt- ing ceremony called 'taking the omens.' A great heap of paper was piled up in a certain corner and lighted ; then the Jews had to dance in flames, while the older tugs (or Thugs) observed the course taken by the sparks, and drew their prognostications therefrom. Poor Borrodaile, a friend of mine, not being a Vestris, and having a large hole in his stock- ings, or may be in his breeches, got severely burnt at one of these religious ceremonies. A propos of the football-match, I must be allowed a few lines of swagger, having been third man in the college eleven in our match with the oppidans in 1848. My vis-a-vis was my friend Blundell, whilom ' the Colonel,' and now a much respected M.P. Did an ancestor of his found Tiverton School, which has be- come illustrious by two such alumni as the present Primate and Colonel Chesney? If so, a fellow - Devonian feeling might have made him a trifle more tender to my shins ; but four- teen shies for the tugs to the oppidans' nought vexed the soul of my opponent. I should have been equally complimentary, had we been on the wrong side. It was a hollow affair, and 42 52 ETON IN THE FORTIES would have been an unsafe speculation for the Oxonian Malaprop, who, watching an evenly- balanced match, was heard to say to his friend : 4 I'll bet you a pair of drawers that the game ends in a glove !' which, being interpreted, means : 'I'll bet you a pair of gloves that the game ends in a draw/ It used to be thought a privilege for the new colleger to be told off to sleep in Upper Carter's or Lower Carter's Chambers, called so, as Mr. Lyte informs us, in compliment to a lower master in the early part of the eighteenth century. The privilege, if it were one at all, had its drawbacks. We were very much cooped up ; 'an ampler ether, a diviner air ' pervaded Long Chamber. I was ' lag ' in Lower Carter's Chamber, and never relished the charwoman's duty, which was my daily fate for years, for no college servant slept on the premises, and our comforts largely depended on our own ministrations. There were only five of us, and we were captained by one of the most fascinating and gifted collegers of the time. Like his colleagues in Upper Carter's and Lower Carter's, he never interfered to pro- tect a small boy from the Sheriff process or the lessons in astronomy. I do not blame him or RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 53 cherish his memory the less, because he chose stare super antiquas vias like his predecessor, and to connive at much that in his heart he must have disapproved of. After highly dis- tinguishing himself in classics, he had the serious misfortune to get Montem, ignorantly supposed to have been a windfall to the holder, instead of too often a dangerous temptation. I think that the evil wrought by Montem on its last representative had a good deal to do with Hawtrey's wise resolve to bring about its abolition. This he accomplished with wisdom and courage, and in the teeth of severe oppo- sition. B. D.'s kindness to me, at Eton and at King's, is one of my most cherished recollec- tions. He came to school in the year 1838. Gifted in mind and body beyond his fellows, he had the happy knack of brightening and enlivening everyone with whom he came in contact. Before he had been at school a week, he showed to an intimate friend a Latin couplet, in which he introduced the names, nearly all in school order, of all the upper school assistants of the time : ' Robora, Carbo, jugum, Crudelior et Cape gyrum, Oaks, Coal ridge, Wilder, and Pick a ring, Et coquus ille vafer, Falle, Bonumque vadum. And Cook he sly, Dupe [usj, and Good ford.' 54 ETON IN THE FORTIES Okes, Coleridge (called by Goldwin Smith in a Greek epigram avOpdicivoq Ao^oe), Wilder, Pick- ering, Cookesley, and Goodford are intelligible to the average Eton mind, but ' falle ' wants a special construe. College servants and under- lings had a difficulty with the word ' Dupuis,' which they shortened into ' Dupus ' ; falle (dupe) therefore is the equivalent in dog Latin for the servants' misnomer. B. D.'s scholarship and varied attainments were the pride of his friends, oppidan and colleger ; but, from a lack of moral fibre and tenacity of purpose, he failed to realize at Cambridge the hopes we so justly entertained of him. Some excuse must be made for him on the ground of ill health, but the initial causes of his falling off must be ascribed to the immediate command of the chance resources which Montem threw in his way. In this case the glories of Salt Hill were dearly bought, though it was natural for every old and impecunious colleger to pray for the captaincy of Montem. ' Aureus, ut spero, mons erit ille mihi !' B. D. .died prematurely at Madeira in 1853. His translation of the Eumenides of /Eschylus, and an edition of the De Corona of Demosthenes RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 55 are all that he left for publication ; but I must be allowed to place on record the following specimens of his scholarship. My opinion of their merit is valueless, but the Alcaics (written in Eton examinations) were greatly admired by Provost Thackeray, and the Iambics (written in the Senate House at Cambridge for the University Scholarship) were praised by that famous scholar, Canon Evans, who was the successful competitor. The English verses were twice repeated, in my presence, by Lord Tennyson, who was greatly impressed with them, and interested in all I could tell him of my old friend's history. He asked me for the loan of my manuscript copy, and proposed to show it to a neighbour and friend at Fresh- water, whom he was in the habit of constantly visiting. No one who ever heard the late Laureate reciting poetry which touched him can forget the solemn cadences and modula- tions of his voice ; they haunt me still, when- ever I turn to the old familiar passages of his poems, which he would repeat at my sugges- tion. On the first occasion he read the verses ' On Illness ' aloud to me, and on the second to the friend upon whom we called. 56 ETON IN THE FORTIES Of old sat Freedom on the heights, The thunders breaking at her feet : Above her shook the starry lights : She heard the torrents meet. There in her place she did rejoice, Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind, But fragments of her mighty voice Came rolling on the wind. Then stept she down thro' town and field To mingle with the human race, And part by part to men reveal'd The fulness of her face Grave mother of majestic works, From her isle-altar gazing down, Who, God-like, grasps the triple forks, And, King-like, wears the crown : Her open eyes desire the truth. The wisdom of a thousand years Is in them. May perpetual youth Keep dry their light from tears ; That her fair form may stand and shine, Make bright our days and light our dreams, Turning to scorn with lips divine The falsehood of extremes ! TENNYSON. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 57 Olim insidebat montibus arduis, Disjecta cernens sub pede fulmina Divina Libertas, superque Astra faces agitare vidit. Et confluentes audiit undique Amnes operatis in penetralibus Exsultat, et ritu Sibyll?e Mente sua latet involuta. Sed vocis altse fragmina praepetes Venti ferebant inde novalia Per culta descendens, per urbes Diva homines aditura venit, Quo vultus segros ante oculos virum Sensim pateret : mox parit impigram Virtutem, et altari marino Suppositum speculator orbem. Qiiae seu Deorum more acies gerit Dextra trifurcas. seu caput induit Regina regali corona, Expetit, insequiturque verum : Qua? mille victrix experientiam Collegit annos : O, Dea, si tibi ^Eterna, si dura juventa, Neu lacrymis oculi madescant ; Sic enitebis, sic dabis aureos Dies alumnis, aurea somnia ; Sic ore divino refelles Quae properat malesuadus error. B. D. 58 ETON IN THE FORTIES Pomona loves the orchard ; And Liber loves the vine ; And Pales loves the straw-built shed, Warm with the breath of kine ; And Venus loves the whispers Of plighted youth and maid, In April's ivory moonlight Beneath the chestnut shade. But thy father loves the clashing Of broadsword and of shield : He loves to drink the steam that reeks From the fresh battlefield : He smiles a smile more dreadful Than his own dreadful frown, When he sees the thick black cloud of smoke Go up from the conquered town. MACAULAY. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 59 Vitem decorus Liber amat suum, Pomona malos, stramineo Pales Laudabit in tecto morantem, Que pecudum calet aura flatu. Venus susurros gestit amabiles Audire, per quos ssepe iterat puer Dilectus et ducenda virgo Foedera castanea sub umbra Candente Luna : scimus ut aereas Vibrare parmas et gladios amet Mavors, ut in pugna cruorem et Deciduam ut bibat ore flammam. Risum ut timendus rideat arbiter Contracta nee frons ssevior imminet, Cernens triumphatas per arces Ignivomum volitare fumum. B. D. 6o ETON IN THE FORTIES ei fjJkv Trpoa-oi^tv KpvTTTtraL Tipy TTOTC TTTUx&is TIS altrxpoTTOios vy/cacrrGu avTos yap aiOr)p, da-rpa, T', ev /urots Se e^oucri TI/M^V, Kat (re/3as yepairepov (rracrets S' \ov(rt. Kal 8p6fj.ovs, \ vop.ovi> rpeTry, ot'as vdcrou? 8^, repard T' rj8' dvap^tav , oi'av TTOVTIOV /3v9ov ^dXfjv, re yatas, Kcu'e/uwv ^ucr^aTa. T' dfj-oifiai, Seiva Sei/aarw^ ci-X 1 / dcrTwv i^crv^ov ^' 6/j.iXiav 8ld(TTpO(f>Ql> KVKXoVO-l, KCU TToAet? ttl aurots /Bddpoicrt irpfj.vo6fv StwAecrav. vcxrei re rdy \eipij fj.aT\ oi>8' ofj.rjyvpci's TroAiTwv, ovSe (frparptai TTOTC re KaAATTta /cat y?y/Hos (re/;Jas, (TTe^avot 8aV(i>8ei$, r) /Sporwv Tt/j.rjs drep CTW^ODO-I Kvpiav B. D. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 61 ' Degree being vizarded, The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre, Observe degree, priority, and place, Insisture, course, proportion, season, form, Office, and custom, in all line of order : And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol, In noble eminence enthron'd and spher'd Amidst the other ; whose med'cinable eye Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, And posts, like the commandment of a king, Sans check, to good or bad ; but when the planets, In evil mixture, to disorder wander, What plagues and what portents ! what mutiny ! What raging of the sea ! shaking of earth ! Commotion in the winds ! frights, changes, horrors, Divert and crack, rend and deracinate The unity and married calm of states Quite from their fixture ! Oh, when degree is shak'd, Which is the ladder to all high designs, The enterprise is sick ! How could communities, Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities, Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, The primogenitive and due of birth, Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels, But by degree, stand in authentic place ?' Troilus and Cressida. 62 ETON IN THE FORTIES ON ILLNESS. Thou roaring, roaring Sea ! When first I came unto this happy isle I loved to listen evermore to thee, And meditate the while. 2. But now that I have grown Homesick, and weary of my loneliness, It makes me sad to hear thy plaintive moan, And fills me with distress. 3- It speaks of many a friend Whom I shall meet no more on Life's dark road ; It warns me that here I must await the end, And cast no look abroad. 4- Thou ever-moaning Sea ! I love thee, for that o'er thy waters come The stately ships, breasting thee gloriously, That bring me news of home. 5- I cannot pray for grace, My soul is heavy, and my sickness sore ; Wilt Thou, O God, for ever hide Thy face ? Oh, turn to me once more ! B. D. MADEIRA, November 30, 1853. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 63 Barring ' Montem-Sure Night,' the orgies in Long Chamber had best be forgotten. The night of the twentieth day before Whit Tuesday was an anxious one for the expectant Captain of Montem. If, before the last stroke of twelve, no ' resignation man '* from Cambridge arrived at Eton with the news of a death or resignation of a Fellow of King's College, the spoils of Montem vested in the senior colleger, so soon as the time for the delivery of the message had expired. We prepared for action, just before mid- night, by hoisting- our beds high in the air, and standing mute as sentinels, we listened to the clock from Lupton's Tower. At the last stroke of twelve at night, the beds were let fall with a loud crash, the shutters slammed, and Windsor and Eton audibly reminded that B. D. had got Montem. I have often wished that he had escaped that perilous distinction. 1 Fireplace ' was, on the whole, a laudable * The ' resignation man ' was the coachman of the Pro- vost of King's. His office and duties were obviously copied from the Mr. Speedyman, so well known to Wykehamists. These officials were sent to Eton and Winchester from King's College and New College, to announce the voidance of a fellowship, either by death or marriage. 64 ETON IN THE FORTIES institution, for there were but two fires in Long Chamber, and a shivering, half- fed lower boy was at least well warmed for an hour or two, on an ordinary winter evening. There were strange mysteries incidental to the preparation of our supper and entertainment. Two fags were told off to prepare the fire ; this was an anxious duty, and very rigidly enforced by the Captain of Fireplace. The grate was quite of the baronial order, and the draught of the chimney so convincing, that I never saw Long Chamber clouded with any smoke but that of tobacco-pipes or cheap cigars. To select three huge lumps of coal, identical in size and height, and then deftly to fit them together on the top bars, sounds easy enough, but it was a ticklish operation, and we fags always dreaded the inspection of our perform- ance. The Captain, armed with a rug string, measured each of the coals that formed the triple crown of our achievement, and after eyeing the . intervening spaces between the lumps, gave a solemn verdict on the accuracy or the scamping of our duty. If he approved, and the ordeal, by fire had been safely passed, at a given signal several beds were run out and RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 65 placed in two parallel rows on either side, with a third facing the fireplace ; this done, supper began. The Captain of Long Chamber had a dupli- cate commission, for he was virtually Captain of Fireplace also, though the latter title has been ascribed to the first colleger out of ' Liberty ' who led off the songs. His was the privilege of granting 'a half-holiday,' meaning thereby an extension of revelling time beyond ten o'clock, the hour for going to bed. Except- ing on gala nights, bread and cheese were our only restoratives, washed down by beer, furtively imported into Long Chamber in small barrels. Occasionally our entertainment was varied by what we were pleased to call ' a grill,' which consisted of bones and scrag ends of mutton, purloined from hall at eight o'clock, planted recklessly on the top of the three coals which had cost us artistic fire-makers such anxiety. When these lumps of meat were sufficiently charred and smoked, they were swallowed as succulent morsels. I see, from Mr. Tucker's book, that the ' Legend of the Sow ' which farrowed on the 5 66 ETON IN THE FORTIES leads of Long Chamber was an article of the collegers' creed as early as the year 1811, or thereabouts ; I am sceptical on the subject of that interesting event, and doubt if the pork suppers and the ' coy, bristly resistance of the crackling ' ever existed, except in the imagina- tion of some hungry colleger. The idea of a hungry sixth - form boy fleshing his teeth, night after night, on ' pig and pruin sauce,' and finally sacrificing on the altar of his insatiate appetite the v Niobe of Swine ' herself, can never die out, since the legend, somehow or other, has crept into the late Laureate's poetry. I find that in the version of the legend which Tennyson followed the sow was not eaten : 1 We took them all, till she was left alone Upon her tower, the Niobe of swine, And so returned unfarrowed to her sty.' An equally improbable legend survived in my time of a colleger who, being blest with a Parsifal disposition, turned poacher, and after shooting one of George III.'s pet swans, served up the bird for supper. In the capacity of under-cook, I have assisted at the dressing of a pike and a duck in Long Chamber. These RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 67 delicacies were very rare ; small Dutch cheeses were good enough for us ; if toasted, so much the better. My good old tutor, who had known hunger in former days, fed his college pupils bounti- fully once every week. On Saturday evenings regularly, there arrived at the door of Long Chamber a servant, carrying an eleemosynary rabbit-pie, with a fruit-pie ' to follow.' These good things were distributed, share and share alike, from the highest to the lowest boy in College who happened to be my tutor's pupils. Each of us carved his two slices fairly and equitably. I don't know about ' eaten bread,' but eaten rabbit and cherry-pie are not soon forgotten. My tutor fed his house-boys magni- ficently ; he was a household word for liberality, and we hungry outsiders had our turn also. Mrs. Hart (clarum et venerabile nomen) ought to have spelt her name ' Heart ' ; she had a true feeling for the collegers, and expressed it in unstinted hard-boiled eggs, nestling in delicious lairs, amid Ostend rabbits, and in- comparable beef-steaks. On Saturday nights, the pale envy of lookers-on was the only draw- back to our enjoyment. As a champion of the 52 68 ETON IN THE FORTIES once a week eleemosynary pie-system, my tutor stood alone ; I believe his example was ap- plauded by his compeers, and, on occasions, followed by one of them. 'No song, no supper'; we had both in ' Fireplace,' such as they were. Our choruses in Long Chamber certainly contrast, very oddly and unfavourably, with the Harrow songs by Edward Bowen. Some of the more vulgar sort were redolent of music-halls and London cider cellars. Such was the ode to Thurtell, a ruffian very properly hanged, though he just escaped being drawn and quartered, in 1824. We liked the fine Newgate flavour of the first verse, and ' gave it mouth,' as Dennis, the hangman in ' Barnaby Rudge,' exhorted his victims to do, when they made their dying speech before they were actually turned off. ' And then to Thurtell they did say, You must for death prepare, For murdering such an honest man As Mr. William Weare. ' His throat was cut from ear to ear, His head was beaten in, His name was Mr. William Weare, He lived at Lincoln's Inn.'* * Altered by the boys from Lyon's Tnn. Sir Walter Scott was much pleased with this song when it first came out. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 6.9 Not that Mr. Thurtell was an equity drafts- man. The wretch had served in the ranks, as a private soldier, and in a fustian speech, made for him at his trial, he talked in ' high falutin ' strains about the evil fate that had spared him in the battlefield, and reserved him for the Dennis of the period. ' Had I fallen,' said the magnanimous gentle man, ' shame would not have rolled her burn- ing fires over my memory.' I grudge him his niche, even in a college song, and the accident which has preserved his name in Carlyle. It was at Thurtell's trial that a counsel asked of a witness, ' What do you mean by a respect- able man ?' Answer : ' A man who keeps a gig-,' and the philosopher founded his contempt for a ' gig-like respectability ' upon that strange definition. Another funny answer is recorded. Mr. Thesiger, subsequently Lord Chelmsford, was the junior counsel for the prosecution in that famous case. ' Well, you saw them and heard them talking,' he said; 'what were they dis- cussing ?' Answer : ' Pork chops, sir.' The improved version is funnier still. A young woman was examined as to the house where 70 ETON IN THE FORTIES the prisoners left the loin of pork which they had brought from London. They had put off the original time for supper, and counsel said to the witness : ' The supper, I believe, was postponed ?' ' Oh dear no, sir ; it was pork chops.' I know by experience the ghastly effect of a Gilbert or Theodore Hook joke escaping from an unconscious witness during the trial of a capital case. The Crown Court of Hertford was rather unfortunate in Thesiger's early days. He used to describe a series of Under Sheriffs for Hertfordshire, all of the same family, and each of them with a nose of abnormal length ' It was a fatality,' he said, ' a damnosa Juere- ditas* College songs must have grated, in old days, on the ear of a well-known poet, whose thrill- ing verses in praise of aquatics can be heard on the fourth of June in Calcutta, when Etonians will travel many a league to attend an anni- versary dinner got up by old school-fellows. I should like to hear our Indian soldiers and civilians shouting the famous chorus by the author of ' lonica.' Dry bobs and wet bobs will bless me for giving them what I believe RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 71 to be the true and original version of the Boat- ing Song which, happily for Eton, has become a classic. SONG FOR THE FOURTH OF JUNE. i. Skirting past ' the bushes,' Ruffling over the weeds, Where the lock-stream gushes, Where the cygnet feeds, Let us see how the wine-glass flushes At supper on Boveney meads. Chorus: Jolly boating weather, And a hay-harvest breeze ; Blade on the feather, Shade off the trees ; Swing, swing together, With your backs between your knees. 2. Thanks to the bounteous sitter, Who sat not at all on his seat : Down with the beer that's bitter, Up with the wine that's sweet ; And oh ! that some generous critter Would give us more ducks to eat. 3- Carving with elbow nudges, Lobsters we throw behind ; Vinegar nobody grudges, Little boys drink it blind. Sober as so many judges, We'll give you a bit of our mind. 72 ETON IN THE FORTIES 4- Dreadnought^ Britannia, Thetis, Victory, Third Upper, Ten, And the ' eight ' poor souls whose meat is Hard steak and a harder hen ; And the end of our long-boat fleet is Defiance (to Westminster men). 5- Rugby may be more clever, Harrow may make more row, But we'll row for ever Steady from stroke to bow, And nothing in life shall sever The charm that is round us now. 6. Others will fill our places, Brest in the old light-blue ; We'll recollect our races ; We'll to the flag prove true, And youth will be still in our faces When we cheer for an Eton crew. 7- Twenty years hence this weather May tempt us from office stools ; We may be slow on the feather, And seem to the boys old fools, But we'll still swing together, And swear by the best of schools. It was once my lot to sing that boating-song to a High Sheriff and some Grand Jurymen, RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 73 at an Assize dinner, and the remark made by the first man in the county was : ' If I had been educated at Eton, that song would drive me mad.' William Johnson (afterwards William Cory) won the prize for English verse at Cambridge in 1842. The subject was ' Plato/ He always insisted that Sir Henry Maine's un- successful exercise was a far more artistic performance than his own, but the examiners thought otherwise. This is Johnson's own criticism : ' Maine's poem on Plato shows wonderful thought, knowledge, and poetical feeling for so young a man. We, his con- temporaries, thought he would be the poet after Tennyson, though Browning was then writing. The dons never discover a poet ; the prize was given to Tennyson through a misunderstand- ing. Lord Brougham came down to Cam- bridge, and he pronounced Henry Maine to be an orator, though he spoke very little at our Historical Society, and not at all at the Union. . . . He became the Darwin of political science. He was also a capital writer of State papers ; the Foreign Office wanted him to come to them to write their papers, but he refused. 74 ETON IN THE FORTIES I suppose that Johnson's poetry owed some- thing not much to his Eton environment. He would have sung beautifully anywhere, under whatever conditions ; surely he struck deeper chords than Moultrie or Mackworth Praed ever dreamt of. Eton collegers were much addicted to theatricals in the days of Keate, as well as of Hawtrey. Speeches in upper school might have been supposed to foster the taste for acting, but the Ajax and the Brutus, clad in pumps, silk stockings, and knee-breeches, and swinging the right arm in semaphore fashion, were unreliable models for an aspiring Roscius. Plays were supposed to be illicit in Long Chamber, but the authorities connived at the performance. Twice I took leading parts on the stage in rooms hired at Slough and Windsor. In my oppidan days at my dame's, our ambition soared to representations of 'Julius Caesar' and Addison's ' Cato.' Levi, the Jew, in High Street, provided the dresses. To effect the loan of a dazzling cuirass, or a pair of greaves, was a difficult operation, for the Hebrew costumier preferred ready money to RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 75 credit. Flannels and jerseys, cut and trimmed to Roman fashion, came in very usefully for togas ; but the tin armour was a more expen- sive item. ' What shall we say for those two helmets, Mr. Levi ?' 'Well, I won't be hard on you. Five on the nail, and four at sight.' (Shillings understood.) We clenched the bargain. I hope the ' four at sight ' were realized by the confiding lender of the pro- perty. There were a few good amateur actors when Keate was consul. He, like his successor, affected an utter ignorance of the preparations and rehearsals, and the boys in Long Chamber who took part in Sheridan's ' Rivals ' flattered themselves that not a soul, except the invited guests, knew anything about the performance. The day after, Keate, looking down on his division, which numbered over a hundred boys, called out, ' Lydia Languish, construe !' and up rose George Williams, blushing to the roots of his hair, bungled through a few sentences of Herodotus, and sat down again. The selection of George Williams for an ingenue was not a happy one. He was tall, awkward, and ungraceful. In 76 ETON IN THE FORTIES University days some of his contemporaries called him ' the laughing camel,' others ' the tortoise on stilts.' Keate then shouted ' Cap- tain Absolute,' and so on with the rest of the ' Dramatis Personae.' I never heard that George Selwyn, the Bishop of New Zealand, distinguished himself on the Eton boards, but he was fond of telling a story, which showed that he was thought by a first-rate judge to have one special qualification for a good stage presence. He happened to be travelling on the same coach with Listen, the famous come- dian, who engaged him in conversation, in the course of which the actor observed : ' I would give five hundred pounds to have your chin/ Our theatrical stars were two brothers who had French blood in their veins, This fact, as in Garrick's case, accounted for their versatility, and instinctive perception of stage effect. Both of them, I am persuaded, would have made their mark as professional actors, and those who have had the good fortune to see my friend, the younger of the brothers, in the leading parts of Moliere's plays, will endorse my view. Our theatre in Long Chamber was rather an FINMORE. RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 77 elaborate construction ; the setting up and the piecing of it together required at least a fort- night's preparation, before the actual perform- ance. It was comical to see Hawtrey patrolling Long Chamber of an evening, preceded by Finmore, his servant, carrying a lantern in his hand. Master and servant walked, apparently in blissful unconsciousness, through the half- prepared scenery of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream ' and ' High Life Below Stairs.' The pasteboard trees, the spangles and bits of finery, were curious frames for the two inter- lopers ; but Hawtrey, after completing a very innocent police supervision, retreated, without ever asking a word about the new structural additions to Long Chamber. I had a good soprano voice, and a smattering of music, from having attended Hullah's classes, so the songs were my contribution to the play. As Peaseblossom, I intercalated some of Shake- speare's songs, music by Arne and Bishop, un- accompanied, it is needless to say, for our orchestra consisted of one violin, played by Joel, brother of the football blower, and any extra musician would have been regarded as an insult by this monopolist. 78 ETON IN THE FORTIES The play-night was a great opportunity for the minor prophet. The entr'acte always con- sisted of Joel appearing in the middle of the stage, fiddle in hand, standing at the foot of a stunted tree, with an owl a la ' Freischtitz ' on the top of it. His song, ' The Howl in the Hivy Bush,' accompanied, Paganini fashion, on one string, was always boisterously encored. I think that three or four oppidans were surrep- titiously smuggled into Long Chamber on the night of the play ; anyhow, it was a very popular entertainment. Brian, one of the half- dozen vendors of ' church sock ' at the wall, was our ' property ' man. The ass's head, of ingenious construction, was his invention, and was voted a triumphant success. My gauze wings were made by a lady at Upton rather a distressing fact for Levi, who was always sitting at the receipt of custom when theatricals were in the wind. It is something to boast of that I heard ' Box and Cox ' in its infant days ; it was the farce of the time. Buckstone, Harley, Mrs. McNamara that was the original cast at the Princess's Theatre. It was acted before the Queen at Windsor Castle. Her Majesty was in delicate RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 79 health at the time, and she laughed so im- moderately and convulsively that Dr. Locock forbade the repetition of the buffoonery until a certain event was over. Charles Kean, who had the management of the Royal Revels, told me this himself. Of course, we boys acted ' Box and Cox ' ad nauseam on every possible occasion. I think Maddison Morton deserved a statue. People tell me that his farce is an adaptation from the French ; if so, I should be glad to know the author. The ' New Buildings' in Weston's Yard may have folded fewer black sheep than those which were penned within the walls of Long Chamber, but I consider that the collegers of my time were just the impecunious lads whose education and maintenance were the real objects of the founder's bounty. A short time since, I heard the present headmaster calling ' absence,' and when three aristocratic names were given out, I rubbed rny eyes, like Rip van Winkle, and said to myself : ' Surely these fellows can't be tugs !' We collegers never affected purple blood in our time ; such associates, cheek by jowl with the sons of Windsor tradesmen, would no more have amalgamated than the Rhine 80 ETON IN THE FORTIES with the Rhone. I am not likely to be tried by a baronetcy or a peerage, but were I ' Sir Arthur,' or ' Lord Ottery,' I think I should pause before I claimed for my heir-apparent a colleger's education a bon marchd. To be sure, democracy is forging ahead, but a young aristo- crat in a serge gown is an anomaly not contem- plated by the statutes of the Royal founder. I never knew a colleger who could pay for the luxury of a private tutor in schooltime. We were distinctly poor boys. One colleger of my time, and one only, succeeded to a large fortune, and, in that instance, the property was not left to him by his parents. Let me, as an old Kingsman, record with gratitude my sense of obligation to the memory of that friend. It is not every legatee that will disburse ,4,000 on the adornment of his college chapel, years after he has ceased to be a member of the University. Stacey's presentation west window in King's College was as cheerfully paid for as his half- sovereign annual contribution to the East window in Eton Chapel was begrudged in former days. I could make a goodly list of foundation scholars of my time, and immediately before it, RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 81 who more than redeemed the bright promise of their boyhood. Let no one who remembers Mountain, Witts, Barrett, Rowland Williams, Balston, Thring, Marriott, Mathias, Bradshaw, declaim against ' The fine old Eton Colleger ' as a myth and a delusion. It is gratifying to see on the bench, at the present time, a bishop and a judge who once knew the more than alpha- betical distinction of K.S., and I gladly take off my hat to my own fag, who never dreamed as a 'little victim,' fifty years ago, of a Star of India and the accolade for his brilliant services in the East. We still have a colleger poet with us Sir Alfred Lyall and we had, until recently, a true genius in his way, my dear friend Henry Bradshaw, the Cambridge Librarian. But of the rank and file, the forgotten unrecorded collegers, I know of none worthier of special mention than Henry Polehampton. One ot the treasures of my library is his copy of ' Poemata Italorum,' uninjured by the shot and shell that rained so fiercely on that ' fine old Eton Colleger' at Lucknow. Sir John Inglis, in a despatch that made the ears of Englishmen tingle, quoted my old friend's name as that of 6 82 ETON IN THE FORTIES one of the heroes of that memorable time. In boyhood, his modesty and self-suppression made him doubly attractive to the few who knew him intimately. At Oxford, he rowed in the Uni- versity crew, and became popular and con- spicuous, in spite of himself. He is affection- ately remembered by his old parishioners at St. Chad's, Shrewsbury,. where he lived for a few years as a curate, loyal to his duty, loyal to his friends. But when the fiery trial came, the unassuming man of no special antecedents, of blameless, if undistinguished career, was found worthy of the confidences of such men as Law- rence and Inglis. As military chaplain, he was ubiquitous, during the agonies of those terrible Lucknow days, comforting the wounded, pray- ing with the dying, ' a very present help in trouble.' There perished in that beleaguered city no nobler spirit than Henry Polehampton's. By one colleger, at least, his name will be always held in enduring remembrance. His epitaph, written by the most brilliant of his contemporaries in Long Chamber, is to be seen in the Parish Church of Hartfield, Sussex : RECOLLECTIONS OF LONG CHAMBER 83 IN MEMORY OF HENRY STEDMAN POLEHAMPTON, M.A., Scholar on the foundation of King Henry the Sixth at Eton, Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, who, being stationed at Lucknow in April, 1856, and wounded in the Garrison Hospital, July 8, 1857, on the ninth day of the siege, died of cholera, July 20, aged 33, and was buried in the Residency by those to whom in a strange and fiery trial he had fearlessly ministered as a good soldier and servant of Christ, THIS MEMORIAL was erected by his brother, the Rector of this Parish. 62 CHAPTER II. THE LIVELY OPPIDAN THE SCHOLARLY OPPIDAN THE HIGH CHURCH OPPIDAN THE GREEN OPPIDAN THE MISCHIEVOUS COLLEGER. THE art of bullying was not entirely monopolised by a few tugs. The two oppidan practitioners, whom I have reasons for remembering, were not of the coarse fibre of the college Tiberius, but were well-bred professors of horse-play. They called themselves very appropriately Burke and Hare, and I instinctively fled, in my fourth-form days, whenever B. and H. were on the prowl for mischief. I will say this for them that they invariably warned a victim of their intended attack by giving a premonitory signal, ' Here we come, Burke and Hare !' so that a young swift - footed Achilles might save his hat by outrunning or dodging his pursuers, though the marauders, THE LIVELY OPPIDAN 85 hunting in couples, and very lively and strong, had the best of it much too often. Their favourite hunting-time was in the winter half, just before five o'clock school, the results of their chase being of some importance to Sanders, the hatter, who profited largely if Burke and Hare succeeded in capturing a good bag of 'five o'clock lousers.' My readers should be reminded that economical fourth-form boys, conscious of the fleeting nature of head-gear at a public school, often invested in a couple of hats at the beginning of the half an ante- meridian and a post - meridian Lincoln and Bennett. I could not afford such an embarrass- ment of riches. My rural 'tile,' shaped by a Devonshire tradesman, price 35. 6d., and dear at the money, was not the stylish article that would have satisfied the late Earl of Hardwicke, but its capture and confiscation were favourite diversions with Burke and Hare. One cold, rainy evening the ruffians were close upon me in the school-yard. In full cry and at the best pace I made for the cloisters. Hare was leading, Burke somewhere about Lower School passage. Anyhow, they succeeded in ' purling ' me or tripping me up on the hard stones at 86 ETON IN THE FORTIES the base of the Founder's statue. I was so bruised and cut about the eye, that some pitying Samaritan took me off at once to my dame's, where Mrs. Hopgood good old soul ! seeing me like the bleeding soldier in Macbeth, and fresh from a war of some sort, embraced me fervently for the first and last time in her honoured life. The oscuhim pads bestowed on me by old Hoppy, coupled with some leeches applied by Surgeon Browne, and an escape from five o'clock school, softened my feelings of asperity towards my pursuers. B. and H. preferred the open air and the large field of Eton for their practical opera- tions. They fretted at the inaction imposed upon them by confinement within the walls of their tutor's house after 'lock-up.' Even there, however, their genius for mischief found opportunities, and they discovered one very curious instrument adapted to their purpose. Provost Hodgson was a short, fat man, about five feet eight in his shoes. Amongst the varieties of storage at the top of my tutor's house was a short, thick roll of cocoanut matting, which B. and H. godfathered and nicknamed 1 the Provost.' It was about the height of that THE LIVELY OPPIDAN 87 worthy, and bore some faint resemblance to him in shape, girth, and tonnage. The possi- bilities of this innocent simulacrum were not lost upon B. and H. ; it would be useful for flooring little fellows running eagerly up the staircase at the cry of ' Lower boy.' Fags of the right sort, when thus appealed to, come on the run. ' Those also serve who only stand and wait ;' but some exacting masters would summon from the depths several of the un- employed, and when these emerged from their rooms and hastened upwards on their mission, then did B. and H., spying their opportunity, gently tilt the ' Provost,' which, acquiring volume and impetus as it rolled downstairs, met the fags full across the chest, and sent them sprawling below. The ingenuity and inventive faculty of these ' Provost ' rollers did not end here. They were very cunning at the art of 'dazzling,' an operation rather venerable and hallowed by custom, for it was in full vigour in the time of Keate, whose eyes, under that terrific movable penthouse of brows which Kinglake has immortalized in ' Eothen,' were made to wink by some audacious practical jokers, reckless of the consequence of detection, 88 ETON IN THE FORTIES so long as they could blind the ' Baffin ' by excess of light. The process, simple as it would seem, did not always succeed in the hands of a novice ; but B. and H. were past masters in all irritating devices, and on a fine summer morning, with their two small looking- glasses held at a cunning angle of an open window, they would shout to lower boys on their way- to the Brocas or cricket-field, who would suddenly turn, look up, and, staring full at the window, be half blinded for their pains. Old soldiers, bred at Eton, must have been re- minded of this silly trick when the art of flashing signals became a part of the regular army drill. If the state of the atmosphere neutralized the dazzling process, B. and H. would vary their diversions by fishing from the top story of the house, not with a dry fly, but with a large dry hook, for my tutor's geranium pots. It was a perilous sport, and certain of condign punishment if the anglers were caught, for E. C. was an accomplished gardener, and particularly fond of geraniums. Once safely hooked at the end of a fish-line, the pots, as they were hauled up, scraped audibly against the wall of ascent, and if the noise aroused THE LIVELY OPPIDAN 89 the owner, B. and H., with their geraniums hanging in mid-air like Mahomet's coffin, stood a very good chance of being ' nailed.' After lock-up there was a short close time for practical jokes, though the ' Provost ' was always at hand to be kept rolling. Burke, however, could not keep still during the evening prayers, which, but for his unseemly pranks, were an impressive service in my tutor's household. All the servants and all the boys attended. When the function was drawing to an end, Burke would creep on his knees under the long table, and, suddenly emerging behind a wooden bench at which the domestics knelt for devotion, would pull off the pumps of the under-butler and decamp with the spoil, leaving ' Cad George,' as he was called, to make his exit from the room shoe- less. George was so used to these petty insults that he rather enjoyed the sport, if sport it can be called, and on the restoration of the stolen property the hatchet was buried at once. I, too, like George, have long ago forgiven though not forgotten the rowdyism of these two sprightly gentlemen, whose ingenuity never failed them, and, when not directed against one's self, was rather amusing than otherwise. 90 ETON IN THE FORTIES It seems strange, but it is a fact, that both Burke and Hare, with all their superabundant ' mus ' (Eton abbreviation for ' muscle ') and mercurial spirits, began to droop directly their school-days were over, and effervesced com- pletely in the early days of manhood. They became shy, reserved, lonely persons, standing exceptions to the Wordsworthian doctrine that ' the child is father of the man.' Burke's ancient aversion to law and order cropped up on one single occasion after he left school, and that was on a flying visit to Eton, whither he was attracted, I suspect, by the fascination of the old hunting-grounds. His best friend could not call him devotional, but he perched himself in the organ-loft during an afternoon service in chapel. It was a commanding position in those days, and rather patronized by old boys as a convenient lounge. We dis- tinctly heard the striking of a lucifer match in the upper regions. Burke was obviously the incendiary ; he had lit his cigar as a soothing accompaniment to the chants and the anthem. I believe he was ejected. This supremely Bohemian act was too discreditable to be much talked about, but it is impossible for me, who THE SCHOLARLY OPPIDAN 91 nosed the tobacco and saw the smoke, to forget. I was favoured soon after this escapade with the sight of a letter of his to an Eton friend, describing rather graphically his visit to New- gate for the pleasure of seeing the execution of Mocker (a notorious criminal) ; but I believe the correspondence ended with this penultimate Hash of interest in men and things. There was no repetition of the smoking concert in the chapel organ-loft. Burke vanished into space clean forgotten ; Hare's gambols ceased. Before the end came, the latter was quite altered, and died as the Hare with many friends. In the same house with Burke and Hare there lived an oppidan of a very different stamp my cousin, Herbert Coleridge, gifted beyond his fellows with intellectual qualities of the highest order. He was greatly distin- guished in mathematics as well as classics, and he was strong in modern languages, including Icelandic. I was told, at the time of his death in 1 86 1 , that the progress of an Icelandic dictionary, to which he had contributed, was materially hindered by the loss of so brilliant a specialist. The late Lord Coleridge wrote an excellent obituary notice of him in Macmillau s Magazine. 92 ETON IN THE FORTIES Herbert and I were of the same age, and we were on terms of the closest intimacy up to the time of his death. He was Newcastle and Balliol scholar as well as double first at Oxford. The present Mr. Justice Mathew achieved the difficult task of beating Herbert in an examina- tion for legal honours. That was in 1853, the year before my cousin was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. Much of this brilliancy was inherited. About his mother the late Chief Justice wrote : ' I can truly say of her that, as I have never myself known any woman of learning and genius equal to hers, so I have very seldom known anyone of a character in all things more noble or more beautiful. Herbert Coleridge lost his father when he was at school, his mother when he was at Oxford ; but the impression made by them upon his character was deep and lasting. Most men no doubt are in most things what their parents and early teachers make them, and Herbert was no exception to this general rule. He had a great power of rapid and accurate apprehension, and a very strong memory.' After summarizing the few incidents of his career, the writer concludes : 'His life THE SCHOLARLY OPPIDAN 93 was uneventful, and if measured by the actual results of his labour, he seems to have left but little behind him to justify the strong impression of power and promise he made upon all who knew him well ; but all who knew him well received this impression. . . . They, too, will treasure the memory of his warm heart and the affectionate disposition of his character and temper, softened from any harshness, and re- fined and purified from any selfishness into con- siderate and almost tender gentleness, by the affliction which he took as it becomes a Christian to take what it pleases God to send ; of his religion, sincere and deep, thoughtful, as might be expected in the grandson and profound admirer of S. T. Coleridge, but remarkably free from pretence or display ; of a man care- less perhaps too careless about general society and ordinary acquaintance, but giving his whole heart where he gave it at all, and giving it steadfastly.' I am told that American parents are sending heir lads to Eton, and that the interest in our public schools is no mere passing sentiment with them. Early in the Forties, Bristed, an American by birth, entered Trinity College* 94 ETON IN THE FORTIES Cambridge, distinguished himself, and on his return to the States, published a lively and interesting volume, called ' Five Years in an English University.' His visit to Eton, and his reflections thereon are pleasant reading, doubly so as coming from an alien in respect of the traditions and usages of English public schools. It seems not unlikely that his account of the school, and the value he set upon his friendship with a very eminent Etonian, may have had some influence on American readers ; anyhow, Yankee parents have honoured us of late years with their attention, and I hope that they are satisfied with the experiment. Shortly after my time, we had a colonial lad, born, I believe, at Sydney ; at all events, he hailed from some place in Australia, and became one of my tutor's pupils. Foreigners localized for a time at Eton were never allowed to forget their origin. My own relative, William Reynell Coleridge, who was born in the West Indies, was nicknamed BarbSdoes a false quantity, of course, but it did for a Leeward Island of some sort or other. The young Australian had been duly cautioned in his native land on the subject of sharks. When summer and the Eton bath- THE GREEN OPPIDAN 95 ing season came round, he naively inquired ' whether there were any sharks at Cuckoo Weir.' This blissful innocence enchanted the lower boys, who would take care to remind the newcomer, and probably look him full in the face in chapel when the big fish allusion cropped up in the Psalm : ' There go the ships, and there is that leviathan.' The neophyte was certainly the greenest of the green, ' in verdure clad ' from top to toe. Hardly had he been disillusioned on the subject of the Cuckoo Weir sharks, when in an unlucky moment he con- fessed to having shot a yellow-hammer without a license. This is the story : 'One evening, at the beginning of the summer half, just after Easter, some boys were talking together in one of the boys' rooms after lock-up, and the conversation turned upon shooting. The young Australian said that he had been staying at Tooting during the Easter holidays, and had shot a yellow-hammer, whereupon he was asked whether he had a game license. He said " No," and he did not know it was required. He was immediately told that a license was necessary for yellow-hammers, that he had got himself into a great scrape, and would probably 96 ETON IN THE FORTIES be sent to prison. He asked what he had better do, whereupon J. W. told him that the only thing for him to do was to write at once to the Duke of Wellington, tell him what he had done, and ask his pardon, and that then, perhaps, the Duke might let him off. He did not feel quite sure about this being altogether accurate, and one of the boys then sat down at once, and wrote a letter to the Duke, telling him what the Australian had done. This was put into an envelope, properly directed and sealed up, and a lower boy was called in, and told to take it down and post it, with instruc- tions, however, not to do so. The Australian thought it had been posted, and he was strongly urged to write at once to the Duke by the same post. Notepaper was produced, and he sat down at the table and wrote a letter as follows : ' " MAY IT PLEASE YOUR GRACE, ' " Has or has not a boy named J W written to Your Grace to say that I, G S , have shot yellow-hammers with- out a license ? ' " Your obedient servant, < Q 3 "'To His Grace ' " The Duke of Wellington, etc." THE GREEN OPPIDAN 97 ' This was promptly put into an envelope, directed to Apsley House, and sent downstairs and posted. The post went out, and after- wards the boys came down to supper, when this was all told to my tutor. He was immensely amused, and said to S. : "Well, at any rate, you are sure to get a reply from the Duke, and I will give you five shillings for it." My tutor was a great collector of auto- graphs. The reply came by return of post : ' " P.M. the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments and begs to say that he has never heard of either J W or G S ." ' This was taken to my tutor, who looked at it, thought it was in the Duke's handwriting, and gave the Australian the five shillings. Some little time afterwards it was ascertained that the reply was wholly written by the Duke's private secretary, who, after the manner of the race, had come to imitate closely the hand- writing of his principal. The ending was rather appropriate, for the Australian scored by getting his five shillings, which quite solaced him, and gave him ample compensation for the joke.' 7 98 ETON IN THE FORTIES Religious persecution was very rare at Eton. It happened, however, on one occasion, that a fifth-form boy of High Church proclivities had a fag of diametrically opposite opinions. He treated him with the utmost kindness, excepting once, when the lower boy refused to say ' Saint Charles the Martyr,' and was whacked accord- ingly. On another occasion a young nobleman interfered to protect a very earnest - minded younger brother in these terms : ' I won't allow you to bully my pious minor? Having betrayed some of my comrades, I feel bound not to spare myself, but to show that I had graduated successfully in the art of mischief, and flew at high game no other than dear old Hawtrey himself. Twice in my career at school was I a ring-leader in worrying the best of men. It is never too late to blush : my confession will be a relief to me, all the more so as I got off scot-free on both occasions, at the expense of my weak, good - natured accomplices. My first offence against law and order was the result partly of my own vanity, and partly of the impecuniosity of a comrade, combined with the love of mischief in which, as a lower boy, I had been so thoroughly THE MISCHIEVOUS COLLEGER 99 grounded by Burke and Hare. Spanky may have put in a distress on my friend's weekly allowance very likely he was ' durus siiper,' reduced to the ' four Joeys and a magpie ' of the Artful Dodger, or in a state more elegantly described by B. D. : O1 -'X 'lP'i-O'Texvwv