Foxholme Hall, and Other Tales

Story 3-Chapter III

The important day arrived when Reginald was to be examined by his tutor, that it might be ascertained where he was to be placed in the school. He got up before the bell rang, soused his head thoroughly in cold water, and, having sponged himself all over, dressed briskly, and sat down to look over some of the books he knew. He was pretty well up in Greek as well as in Latin, though he had not gone very deep into the intricacies of either language. Mr Nugent, his tutor, had grounded him well also in mathematics, so that he was in no particular fright as to the result of his examination. He wanted, however, to be as well placed as possible, if the truth might be known, to get out of fagging as soon as he could.

After prayers, Mr Lindsay told him to come to his room with his books. He went there with a good heart also. His Latin construing and parsing seemed to satisfy his tutor, and then he read some Greek. Mr Lindsay looked pleased. This encouraged him. He went over book after book with perfect ease. The chances are, that he knew less than many a boy who had passed a much worse examination; but he had the advantage of possessing well-strung nerves, and of not feeling that he was doing anything dreadful or out of the way. Whatever he did know he recalled at once to his memory. He had also no wish to pretend to know more than he did. All was perfectly natural with him. His head and his voice were clear, and so on he went without the slightest hesitation. Had he been suddenly asked to sing a song which he knew, he could have done so with ease.

“You have got through very well,” said Mr Lindsay; “I am happy to say that I shall be able to get you very satisfactorily placed.”

Reginald was not a little pleased. He would have liked to ask “Where?” but he thought that might not be etiquette; so he restrained his curiosity, and ran off with a light stop to deposit his books in his room, and afterwards to join Power at breakfast, with a remarkably good appetite.

“Where do you think I shall be, though?” he asked more than once. Power guessed, but did not like to run the risk of disappointing him, so wisely would not give an opinion. At last, a short time before eleven o’clock, he set off with Mr Lindsay to make his début in school. He was left by himself in the school-yard while Mr Lindsay, as did most of the masters, went into “Chambers,” to have a talk with the Doctor. He felt for a moment a little forlorn, standing in that wide place with so many boys around him, and yet not one he could call a friend or even an acquaintance; for neither Power nor Anson had yet come.

The boys now began to pour into the school-yard. Many came up to him and began the old standard questions.

“What’s your name?” asked one; “any relation of Warrender at Rowley’s?”

“No,” answered Reginald. “I have had no relation here since my father was at Eton, that I know of.”

“Oh, yes – but surely you’re a cousin of Tom Jones?” observed one who was looked upon as a great wag.

“I am not aware that I have that honour,” answered Reginald.

Several similar questions he had to answer, which he did in perfect good humour. At last a big, hulking fellow, who looked as if he had got fat on sucking-things, rolled up to him. There was something in the boy’s air which reminded him wonderfully of a bully at his former school.

“How are you, Master Jones?” said the fellow, with a supercilious look.

“Pretty well, Tommy Green,” answered Reginald, giving him back glance for glance.

“How dare you call me Green!” exclaimed the big boy, looking angry.

“Because you have a remarkably verdant hue about you,” answered Reginald, who felt galled by the tone of bullying superiority assumed by the other.

The big boy’s rage at the unusual impudence of a new fellow instantly blazed forth. “Take that for your pains, young one!” he cried out, giving Reginald a blow on the chest; “and that – and that – and that.”

Reginald was for a moment staggered, but instantly recovering himself, he flew at the big fellow, and returned the blows with interest.

“A mill – a mill – a mill!” was the cry, and fellows rushed up from all parts of the yard, and closely surrounded the combatants. Reginald defended himself as well as he could from his big antagonist, who, fortunately, though evidently inclined to bully, was no great adept in the science of pugilism. At another time Reginald would have fought with the hope of victory; now his chief object was to defend his face, so that he might not have to make his appearance before the Doctor with a black eye or a bleeding nose. He made up for want of size and weight, and science also, for he had not much of it, by his activity, and consequently the big fellow exhausted his strength by frequently striking at the air, when he thought that he was going to put in an effective blow. As Reginald’s courage and coolness manifested themselves, he gained plenty of supporters, and he soon guessed that his opponent was no great favourite. The exclamations and cries in his favour every moment grew warmer and warmer. This encouraged him, or rather, for he did not want much encouragement, discouraged the other. He continued fighting as cautiously, but commenced more aggressive operations, very much to the astonishment of the big fellow, who had fancied that he was going to gain an easy victory, – in fact, intended to give the new-comer a thrashing for his impudence.

“Well done! well done! Famously hit! Bravo! Pitch into him, little one!” were the exclamations over and over again repeated by his friends; while the opposite party kept shouting, “Go it, Cicester! – Give it him soundly! – Hit him hard!” Cirencester, however, did not seem to be very successful in putting this advice into execution, and impartial observers were of opinion that Warrender was getting the best of it, when the cry was raised of “All up – all up!” and the masters were seen coming out of the Doctor’s door. After stopping a minute to have a short chat together, they proceeded to the school.

The moment the masters appeared, the combatants were separated, and Cirencester drew off without making any remark. The delay enabled Reginald to arrange his neck-tie, smooth his hair, and shake himself into his jacket. He felt rather bruised and heated, but he bore fortunately no remarkable outward traces of his combat. He soon rejoined Mr Lindsay, who took him to the Doctor, who looked, he thought, benignantly at him, and great was his satisfaction to find that he was placed in the Lower Remove.

From that moment he resolved to show that he had not been wrongly placed. It was a great satisfaction to feel that he should have only to remain a year numbered among those who could be fagged. He was thus also only one division below Power. He found that unless he was “plucked,” he should rise one division every half-year, with certain trials and examinations interposed, into Fifth Form, and so on, but that there was no trial into Sixth Form, the vacancies in it being filled up by seniority.

Power and Anson congratulated him on his successful début in the school-yard.

“Cicester, big as he looks, is below you in the school,” observed Anson. “He is an earl, but we don’t take note here of titles. He eats too much to be strong, and thinks too much of himself to have many real friends. I am very glad that you treated him as you did, because I think that it will sicken him of attacking you again, and make other fellows treat you with respect. Of course, however, there are tuft-hunters here as well as elsewhere, and as some of the Fifth Form are among his friends, you must expect to be fagged a little sharply by them occasionally, if you get in their way. However, you’ll know how to manage to keep out of rows. One thing I have found out; there is no use attempting to shirk fagging. A fellow is always certain to get the worst of it. There is no dodge a fellow can try which the Fifth Form are not up to, because you see that they have tried them all themselves. The worst thing a fellow can do is to show the sulks. He is certain to take nothing by it. I always find it best to do a thing willingly and promptly, however disagreeable it may be.”

Reginald thanked his friends for their advice, and moreover took care to follow it.

The next day, when he went into school, he was found to have prepared his lessons particularly well, and the master looked at him with an approving eye, as a boy likely to do credit to himself, and some little, perhaps, to the school. From the very first Reginald set himself against the use of cribs. He was rather laughed at for this, at first, by his associates, who were aware of what they considered his peculiar crotchet.

“I have just a question to ask you fellows,” he observed one day. “Do you think it right or gentlemanly to tell a lie? Answer me seriously, not in joke.”

It was agreed that a lie was ungentlemanly and wrong.

“Well, is it not equivalent to the telling a lie to pretend to have obtained knowledge in one way, when you have obtained it in another? Is it not the same to take up a copy of verses or an exercise which you did not write, and to pretend that you wrote them? That is one reason why I will not use a crib. I should feel ashamed of myself, and disgraced every time I did so. Another reason is, that we came to school to gain knowledge, to prepare ourselves for college, and for our future course in life, as completely as we can; and the use of cribs prevents our doing this, for though they may enable us to get through a lesson, depend on it a lesson learnt with them is very quickly again forgotten. There is nothing like having to turn over the leaves of a dictionary that we may find a word, to enable us to remember it.”

“Yes, but few fellows can turn over the leaves as quickly as you can,” observed Anson.

“I learned the knack at a private tutor’s long ago,” answered Reginald. “I thought it a bore at first, but he showed us how to do it properly, and I very soon found the advantage of what he insisted on.”

Power supported Reginald in this and many other respects, when he held out boldly against what his straightforward, honest mind at once saw to be bad practices. He made enemies by so doing, but he also made friends; the enemies he made were the least worthy, and the friends the most worthy of his school-fellows – many of them becoming and continuing firm and fast ones.

Reginald very soon made acquaintance with old Harry Cannon, the waterman at Cuckoo Weir. Fully thirty fellows were either standing on Lower Steps or in punts, without a rag on them, ready to plunge into the clear stream; or were swimming about by themselves, spluttering and coughing; or were being dangled at the end of old Harry’s blue pole. Reginald had thought that it was necessary to go, at all events, in the first place, to old Harry. Many of the fellows, not knowing that he could swim, tried to frighten him; but, without much ceremony, he doffed his clothes, and in he went with a “rat’s header” at once, and swam boldly up the stream, stemming it lustily; then he turned a sommersault, trod water, and went through a variety of manoeuvres to which the youngsters present were but little accustomed.

“You’ll do, sir; you’ll do,” shouted old Harry, quite delighted with the spirited way in which he took to the water; “a Newfoundland dog couldn’t have done it better.”

Of course, on the first “passing day,” Reginald – who was to be met by Power, Anson, and some others of his new friends, in a boat – started off for Middle Steps.

The masters stood ready. Reginald jumped into the punt, and, with several others, was carried out into mid-stream. Several were ordered to plunge overboard before him. Most of them went in with “footers,” and now two or three were ordered to come out and take further lessons from old Harry. Reginald waited patiently till his turn came, and then overboard he went with a fine “rat’s header,” and downwards he dived. He did not come up. The masters were alarmed, and shouted to old Harry to look for him.

“What can have become of the boy?” exclaimed one of them, in real alarm.

Suddenly, not far off, up came Reginald, with a big stone in his hand.

“All right!” he exclaimed. “I wanted to bring a trophy from the bottom;” and, depositing it on Middle Steps, away he swam in good style to Lower Steps. Just touching them, away he went – now swimming with one arm, now with the other, now with both hands like a dog, now turning on his back and striking out with his feet.

“You’ll do, and do famously!” exclaimed the master, who was not famed for bestowing unnecessary compliments on any one.

Reginald came out with no little feeling of allowable pride, and, dressing quickly, stepped on board the boat, when, taking the yoke-lines in a knowing manner, he steered away for Bargemen’s Bridge, where the stream once more joins the river.

Reginald at once threw himself into boating most zealously. He was always on the water, practising away, and soon became as proficient with oars as with sculls – his great ambition being to belong to an eight-oar. He and Power took a lock-up between them, for which they paid five pounds; and though they liked it very much, they agreed that it was not half so much fun as their boating in old days at Osberton, with Toby Tubb as coxswain. Reginald did not neglect cricket, however; but as he was still numbered among the Lower boys he could only belong to the Sixpenny Club.

The playing-fields at Eton are divided between different clubs. The boys subscribe to one or the other according to their position in the school. Above the Sixpenny, to which the entrance is only one shilling, is the Lower Club, to which those in the Fifth Form belong who are considered not to play well enough to belong to the Upper Club. To the Upper Club the clever and all the first-rate players alone belong. The grand cricketing time is “after six,” when, in the playing-fields, the balls are flying about as thickly as in a general action, or, at all events, as at “Lord’s” on practising days; while, especially at the great matches in the Upper Club, the non-players lie on the turf, indulging largely in Bigaroon cherries and other fruits in season, and making their remarks on the game.

Such is the every-day Eton life in which Reginald found himself placed. There was abundance of occupation to pass the time, and yet no very salient events worthy of description. After he had been there about a fortnight, he found himself apportioned, by the captain of his house, to a master who had already another fag. That fag, Cross, had been all his school-life at Eton, and was well accustomed to the work, so thought nothing of it; but when Reginald first found himself ordered to perform some menial office, he could not help his spirit rising in rebellion; but he soon conquered the feeling, the absurdity of which he acknowledged to himself, and he at once set about his task with a cheerful countenance and willing hands. The out-of-door fagging went more against the grain, as he did not like to be sent here or there by any stranger about some trifle, when he wanted to be doing something else; but he soon got reconciled to that also, with the reflection that all Eton fellows had to go through it.

Cross and he got on very well together. They were not great friends, but they never quarrelled. Their master, Coventry, was good-natured, though strict in having the duties they owed him performed, and his orders obeyed.

Reginald was talking over Coventry’s character with Power, and observed – “I would fifty times rather serve a strict master like him than one of your easy-going, idle fellows, who all of a sudden takes it into his head that he will have everything in apple-pie order, and thrashes you because you do not know what he wants.”

“Certainly,” answered Power. “When I first came I had a master who never by any chance was in the same mind two days together. He would have different things for breakfast and tea, and everything in his room arranged differently. He kept my mind on a continual stretch to guess what he would want, till he made me very nearly as mad as himself. At last I informed him that I would do anything that he told me, but that I could not undertake to guess his wishes. He could not see the reasonableness of my arguments, and so I at length gave up any attempt to please him – he of course never being satisfied; and thus we went on till the end of the half.”

What with observation, conversation, and his own personal experience, Reginald daily gained a larger amount of knowledge of the world in which he was destined to move – not of the bad which was taking place, but of the way to conduct himself in it.

Story 4-Chapter I

STORY FOUR – The Crew of the Rose

A crew of Johnians were rowing down the Cam on a fine summer day, in their own boat Two of them were freshmen – sixth form boys in manners and pursuits; the coxswain had entered on his third year, and was reading for honours. These were English youths. The fourth – Morgan ap Tydvill – was from Wales, a pleasant, companionable fellow, proud of his country, proud of his own family in particular, and proud of the boat, of which he was part owner; generous and friendly, but very choleric, though easily calmed down. The fifth was Gerald O’Mackerry, of Irish genealogy, as his name intimates, and his patronymic was a subject of much harmless pride with him. These two latter personages were in their second year.

For some time the four rowers bent earnestly to their oars, the coxswain doing the principal part of the talking work; but as the stream carried the boat along, and there was no necessity for constant pulling, they at times restrained their arms to let their tongues run free. The chatting commenced thus: —

“We haven’t given a name to the boat yet.”

“Well, I vote for the ‘Hose.’”

“I think the ‘shamrock’ sounds well,” said O’Mackerry.

“The Leek,” was Ap Tydvill’s suggestion.

”‘Leek!’ – an unlucky name!” observed Green, the coxswain, who, though a gentlemen and a scholar, was sadly addicted to punning; but they were all of Saint John’s College, and therefore punsters by prescription. This bad pun let out a good deal of punning; when it ceased to flow, the original subject was renewed.

“Will the Trinity boat beat us next month? They have a choice crew, all in capital condition, and heavy men. O’Mack is the only twelve stone man here,” (all gownsmen, you know, are men, however boyish in years and appearance), “and Tyd is such a little fellow!”

“I’m five feet seven,” replied he, rather snappishly; “and I can tell you that the mean height of a man’s stature is but five feet four. (Murmurs of dissent.) O’Mack is about ten inches above the standard; but I’ll back a man of my own height (drawing himself up majestically) against him for walking, jumping, running, fighting, wrestling, swimming, throwing a bar, or rowing a long distance – if he have my breadth of chest and shoulders, and such an arm as this,” displaying a limb as hard and muscular as that of a blacksmith. By his own estimate he was of the perfect size and form.

His vanity, however, though quizzed unmercifully, was not humiliated by any detected failure in his bodily proportions, which he submitted to measurement. The circumference of his arm and wrist was considerable – the whole limb and his chest brawny, hirsute, and muscular.

“I’m not afraid of Trinity,” shouted he loudly, if not musically. “Sumamus longum haustum et fortem haustum, et haustum Omne simul, as Lord Dufferin said at the Norwegian Symposium, and we shall bump them.”

At the spirited Latin watchword, our Cantabs commenced a chorus, “Omne simul, omne simul,” etc, etc, which Tyd himself had set to an old Welsh tune of the Bardic days. The effect was thrilling – the coxswain, both sonorously and with a correct ear, singing, “Omne simul, omne simul,” and beating time with his feet against the stretcher, while the rowers, arms and lungs and all, pulled and chorused sympathetically.

This sport lasted about half an hour, and then the question was again mooted, “What name shall we give to the boat?”

Green, the steersman, put the question: “Those who vote for the Rose will say ay – three ays; those who vote for the Shamrock – one; those who vote for the Leek – one.”

“The ays have it.”

Three triumphant cheers for the majority.

The freshman, quite cockahoop at the victory gained over Ap Tydvill and O’Mackerry, ventured to ask the Welshman “how it happened that a leek became the national emblem of Wales?” He readily answered, “When my country was able to lick (query: leek) your country, – I don’t include yours, O’Mackerry, – one of our jolly old princes having gained a great victory over one of your Saxon leaders and his army, took up a chive, which he found growing somewhere near the Wye, and said, ‘We’ll wear this henceforward as a memorial of this victory.’”

“Pooh, pooh,” said the coxswain; “the true version is this. Once upon a time, Wales was so infested with monkeys that the natives were obliged to ask the English to lend them a hand in destroying them. The English generously came to their assistance; but not perceiving any distinction between the Welsh and the monkeys, they killed a great number of the former, by mistake of course; so, in order to distinguish them, clearly, they requested that the Welshmen would stick a leek in their bonnets.” A running fire (though on water) commenced against poor Monsieur Du Leek – as the bantering youngsters, with profound bows and affected gravity, chose to name Ap Tydvill – of pedigree immeasurable.

However, he recovered his serenity, after an explosion of wrath somewhat dangerous for a moment; and, on the free trade principle, began to quiz some one else.

“Mack,” said he, “do you remember the ducking you got there, among the arundines Cami?” pointing to a deep sedgy part of the river.

“I do; and I had, indeed, a narrow escape from drowning, or rather from being suffocated in the deep sludgy mud.”

“How was it?” one of the others asked.

“I was poling a punt along the bank, looking for waterfowl to have a shot, you know, and I pulled myself into the river!”

“You mean, Paddy,” said Mr Tydvill, “that you pulled yourself out of the river.”

“No; I mean what I say; there is no blunder for you to grin at. I stuck the pole so firmly into the deep mud, that I could not pull it out; but it pulled me in.”

“Why didn’t you let go at once?”

“I hadn’t time to think of that; instinctively I grasped the pole, lost my balance, and tumbled into the river.”

The unfortunate youth was extracted from the deep slime among osiers by a labourer near hand, and he dried his clothes in a cottage —

“Quae villula tectum,

Praebuit – ”

without any bad results.

“But, do you remember, Master Tydvill,” said O’Mackerry, “the day when I was so near catching you and throwing you into the deep hole – clothes and all? Ay, and you deserved a ducking?”

“But really, Mack, would you have pitched me in, when you knew that I was a bad swimmer, especially when dressed?”

“Assuredly I would have done so, for I was unusually hot in my temper, though very cold in my body at that moment; however, I suppose that I should have acted the part of the Newfoundland dog, and dragged the puppy by his neck out of the water.”

This complimentary part he addressed to the crew at large, and then described the incident.

He had been sitting on the top bar of a ladder, of which the lower end rested on the bottom of a very deep part of the river under a high and steep bank, for the purpose of aiding a swimmer in his ascent from the water. The day was cold, and O’Mackerry remained in a crouching posture for a few moments on the ladder, meditating the plunge, but not taking it. His playful friend stole behind and jerked him, heels over head, into the water, and immediately ran away. O’Mackerry, after recovering from the shock and getting out of the river, pursued the offender nearly half a mile, and happily without catching him. Tydvill rather unhandsomely afterwards caricatured his friend as a barometrical green frog in a broad pellucid bottle partly filled with water, squatting on a rung of a ladder, ingeniously serving as a graduated scale, to show the condition of the atmosphere; the frog rising or descending as its sensations led it to immerse its body in water, or rise more or less above it. O’Mackerry was a capital swimmer, and was sometimes seen to capsize himself from an Indian canoe, which he had purchased somewhere on the river Shannon, into its tidal waters with his clothes on, for the purpose of habituating himself to swim under such difficulty. He had the satisfaction of saving the lives of two persons in danger of drowning, by his skill, courage, and presence of mind.