i left vienna by the carriage which carried the imperial mail, shortly before christmas, in very severe weather. it would be impossible to construct a more comfortable carriage for the use of those to whom speed is no object. it carried only two passengers and the courier, and was abundantly roomy and well cushioned. it carried, of course, also all the mails from hungary and from vienna to the north and westward, including those to munich and paris and london. and to the best of my recollection all these despatches, printed as well as written, were carried in the hind boot of our conveyance. if they were not there i can’t guess where they were!
i remember that i was tremendously great-coated, having, besides my “box-coat,” a “buffalo robe,” which i had brought back with me from america, and i have no recollection of suffering at all from cold. we proceeded in very leisurely fashion; and i well remember the reply of the courier to my question, how long we were to remain at the place at which we were to dine, given with an air of mild surprise{345} at my thinking such a demand necessary. “till we have done dinner!” said the courier—“bis wir gespeist haben!” the words seem still to echo in my ears! to me, whose experiences were of the quicksilver mail!
when we had done dinner, and he asked me with leisurely courtesy if i had dined well, he said, in answer to my confessing that i could have wished nothing more, unless it were a cup of coffee, if perchance there were one ready, “no doubt the hostess will make us one. it is best fresh made!” and so, while the imperial mail, and all the paris and london letters, and the post-horses, waited at the door, the coffee was made and leisurely discussed!
i will upon this occasion also spare the reader all guide-book chatter, and pass on to the arrival of myself and the friend who was with me, at dover, which arrival was a somewhat remarkable one.
we had travelled by antwerp, which i wished to revisit for the sake of the cathedral, and crossed from ostend, where also i was not sorry to pass a day.
we had a long and nasty passage, but at last reached dover to find the whole town and the surrounding hills under snow, and to be met by the intelligence that all communication between dover and london was interrupted! even the boat which used to ply between dover and the london docks would not face the abominable weather, and was not running. there was nothing for it but to take{346} up our abode at the “king’s head” (no “lord warden” in those days!), and wait for the road to be opened.
we waited one day, two days, with no prospect of any amelioration of our position. on the third day two young americans who were in the house, equally weather-bound with ourselves, and equally impatient of their imprisonment, assured us that in their country the matter would speedily be remedied, and declared their determination of getting to canterbury on a sledge. we had heard by that time that from canterbury to london the road was open. the people at the “king’s head” assured us that no such attempt had any chance of succeeding. but of course our american friends considered that to be a strictly professional opinion, and determined on starting. we agreed to share the adventure with them. four of the best post-horses we could find in dover were hired, a couple of postboys, whose pluck was stimulated by promises of high fees, were engaged, and a sledge was rigged under the personal supervision of our experienced friends.
on the fourth day we got ourselves and our respective trunks on to the sledge, and started among the ill-omened prognostications of our host of the “king’s head” and his friends. i think the postboys did their utmost bravely, but at the end of about five miles from dover they dismounted from their floundering horses and declared the enterprise an impossible one. it was totally out of the question, they said, to reach canterbury. it would be{347} quite as much as they could do to get back to dover.
what was to be done? the boys were so evidently right that the americans did not attempt to gainsay their decision. a council of war was called, the upshot of which was that our two american allies decided to return to dover with their and our baggage and wraps, while my friend and i determined at all risks to push on to canterbury on foot. we had eleven miles of bleak country before us, which was simply one uniform undulating field of snow. the baffled postboys gave us many minute directions of signs and objects by which we were to endeavour to keep the road. we had started from dover about nine o’clock in the morning. it was then not quite noon. the mail would leave canterbury at ten at night for london, and we had therefore ten hours before us for our undertaking.
we thought that four, or, at the outside, five would be ample for the purpose, if we were ever to get to canterbury at all. but we did not reach “the fountain” in that much-longed-for city till past eight that evening!
it was a terrible walk. of course at no conceivable rate of progression could we have been eight hours in walking eleven miles if we had continued to progress at all. but we lost the road again and again! sometimes got far away from it, and fought our way back to it by the directions obtained at farm-houses or labourers’ cottages, from people who{348} evidently deemed our enterprise a desperate one. mostly we were struggling knee-deep in snow, once or twice plunging into and out of drifts over our waists. we were not on foot quite all the time; for once we rested in a hospitable cottage for an hour, when we were about six miles from canterbury. our host there, who was, i take it, a waggoner, strongly advised us to give it up, and offered to let us pass the night in his cottage. we were already very much beaten, and were sorely tempted to close with his proposal. perhaps, if we had known that we should never, as was the case, see those americans again, we should have done so. but much as our bodies needed rest, our souls needed triumph more! so we turned out into the snow again, and—by eight o’clock did reach the hospitable “fountain”!
but we were in a sad plight, desperately wearied, a good deal bruised and knocked about, and as thoroughly wet through literally as though we had been walking in water instead of snow. rest was delicious; a hot supper was such delight as no “gods” had ever enjoyed. good beds would have been elysium! but—the thought of the next morning gave us pause. we had no rag of clothing of any sort save the thoroughly soaked things on our backs. no boots or shoes! and how should we possibly put on again those on our feet if once they were taken off? in london, if once reached, all these troubles would be at an end!
finally we decided to go on by the mail at ten{349} that night. but here a fresh disappointment awaited us. the mail was booked full inside! there were two outside places, those on the roof behind the driver, available. but we were dead beat, wet through to the bone, unprovided with any wrap of any kind, and it was freezing hard!
but on to the mail we climbed at ten o’clock. i believe the good hostess of “the fountain” genuinely thought our proceeding suicidal, and the refusal of her beds absolutely insane.
that journey from canterbury to london was by far the worst i ever made. it really was a very bad business. but at every change of horses i got down, and holding on by the coach behind ran as far as my breath and strength would allow me, and thus knocked a little warmth into my veins. i could not persuade my companion to do likewise. he seemed to be wearied and frozen into apathy. the consequence was that whereas i was after some twelve hours in bed not a jot the worse, he was laid up for a fortnight.
shortly afterwards i assumed my new duties at birmingham. the new building had been completed, and was—or rather is, as all the world may see to the present day—a very handsome one. the head master, whose assistant i specially was, was dr. jeune, who became subsequently bishop of peterborough. the second master, mr. gedge, had also an assistant named mason. our duties were to teach latin and greek to any of the sons of the inhabitants of birmingham who chose to{350} avail themselves of king edward’s benevolent foundation. none of the masters had anything to do with the business of lodging or victualling boys. the boys were all day boys, and our business was to teach them latin and greek during certain hours of every day.
i soon became aware by a strangely subtle process of feeling rather than observation that my eight years’ winchester experience of schoolboy life and ways had not constituted a favourable preparation for my present work. i felt that i was working in an atmosphere and on a material that was new to me. it would be absurd to imagine that all those sons of birmingham tradesmen were stupider or duller boys than the average of our winchester lads. but it appeared to me that it was far more difficult to teach them with any fair amount of success. they were no doubt all, or nearly all, the sons of men who had never learned anything in their lives save the elements of a strictly commercial education. and i felt myself tempted to believe that the results of heredity must extend themselves even to the greater or lesser receptivity of one description of teaching instead of another. i suppose that the descendant of a long line of shoemakers would be more readily taught how to make a shoe than how to build a ship. and it may be in like manner that ingenuas didicisse fideliter artes comes more readily to a boy whose forefathers have for generations done the same thing than it would to the descendant of generations unmoulded by any such discipline!{351}
corporal punishment was used, and naturally had to be resorted to much more frequently by me than by my superior, whose work was concerned with the older and better conducted portion of the boys. in fact as far as my recollection at the present day goes, it seems to me that hardly any morning or afternoon passed without the application of the cane. and this corporal castigation, though devoid of all the judicial formality which might have made our winchester “scourging” a really moral punishment if the frequency of it and the prevailing sentiment upon the subject both of masters and scholars had been other than it was, was in truth a very much severer infliction as regards the absolute pain to be suffered by the patient. three or four strokes with the cane over the palm of the hand would be very much worse than the perfunctory swishing with the peculiar winchester rod. i do not remember that this caning was ever judicially used as a sentence to be executed at any future time, or that it was ever, for the most part, used to punish the idleness which had prevented a boy from learning his lessons at his home. it was used almost exclusively, as far as i remember, for the preservation of order and silence during the school hours, and the correction of the offender followed instantly on the commission of the offence.
and this necessity of enforcing order among a very undisciplined crew of some forty or fifty lads of ages varying from perhaps twelve to about fourteen or fifteen was by far the most irksome and{352} difficult part of my duty. i was accustomed to tuition. but the cumulation of the office of beadle with that of teacher was new to me, and i did not like it. and still less did i like the constant tendency of the urgent duties of the first office to encroach upon those of the second.
my scholastic experiences had accustomed me to a state of things in which idleness, violence, daredevil audacity, and neglect of duty had been common enough, but in which organised trickery and deception had been rarely seen. and i felt myself unfitted for the duties of a policeman among these turbulent birmingham lads. i never saw the face of any one of them save during the school hours; and i remember thinking at the time that, had this been otherwise, i might have obtained a moral influence over at least some of them, which might have been more useful than all my efforts during school hours to force the rules and principles of syntax into unwilling brains, accustomed to the habitual defiance of them during all the remainder of their lives.
it appeared to me that i was engaged in the perpetual, and somewhat hopeless, task of endeavouring to manufacture silk purses out of sows’ ears; and i confess that i never put on my academical gown to go into school without feeling that i was going to an irksome, and, i feared, unprofitable labour. i tried hard to do my duty; but i fear that i was by no means the right man in the right place.
no preparation of any kind, beyond assuming my{353} gown and trencher cap, before going into school was needed, and i had, therefore, abundance of leisure, during which i did a considerable quantity of miscellaneous reading, not perhaps altogether so unprofitable as the advocates of regular study devoted to some well-defined end might suppose.
we endeavoured—my colleague mason and i—i remember, to get up a debating society among the few—very few—young men, with whom we had become acquainted. but it did not succeed. young birmingham, intent on making, and on its way to make, “plums” in hardware, did not think that “debating” was the best way of employing the hours that could be spared from the counting-house.
there might, no doubt, have been found a better element of social intercourse in the younger clergy of the town; but they were all strongly “evangelical,” which was at that time quite sufficient to entail an oil-and-vinegar-like mutual repulsion between them and the young wykehamist. and this, involving as it does a confession of a discreditable amount of raw young-man’s prejudice, i mention as an illustration of the current opinions, feelings, and mental habits of the time, for, after all, i was not more prejudiced and more stupid than the rest of the world around me.
in fact my life at birmingham was for the most part a very solitary one. i used to come home tired and worn out to my lodgings with mrs. clements in new hall street; and the prospect of a lonely evening with my book, my teapot, and my pipe, was{354} not unwelcome to me, for it was, at least, repose and quiet after noise and turmoil. every now and then i used to dine and pass the evening with dr. jeune; and these were my red-letter days. jeune had married the daughter of dr. symonds, the warden of wadham. she was a tall and very handsome woman, as well as an extremely agreeable one. at first, i remember, i used to think that if she had been the daughter of anybody else than the “head of a house,” one just emerging from statu pupillari might have found her more charming. but this soon wore off as we got to know each other better. and long talks with mrs. jeune are the pleasantest—indeed, i think i may say the only pleasant—recollections of my life at birmingham.
