SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS, BY A SUFFERER-
" Non ignara 'Tian, miseris succurrere disco."
MR. BEST, in his " Personal Memorials," has given an account of Lincoln School, which, though amusing, suggests thoughts far from satisfactory on the common mode of conducting education. There is nothing extraordinary in the anecdotes to which we refer ; and any man who calls to mind the circumstances of his own instruction, will pro- tably find matter equally calculated to raise the laugh at the instant, and the reflection after it, " how strangely and wonderfully are we i • oducated." "If we saw the kitchen," say the fine ladies, " we should ;not eat our dinners ;" and experience of schcas should shake our faith in them for our children : yet it has not this effect,—perhaps because levery one supposes that his luck has been worse than the common lot. But if we compare notes, we suspect a very general agreement of state- ment will be discovered. To follow Mr. BEST'S example— My own school recollections have nothing strange in them, and as assuredly nothing creditable to the system or the administration of education.
My first school was a small preparatory one ; and only two circum- stances connected with it have made any impression on my memory,— the one, that my schoolmistress taught me to drink gin ; the other, that my schoolmaster burst into tears on announcing the death of Lord NELSON. The gin, however, I regard as the more curious fact ; and it is therefore right to explain, that it was given to me in the quantity of a full glass, with a biscuit, for luncheon. My schoolmistress could have had no motive but a wide benevolence, a generous diffusion- of-gin spirit, for the bounty, which was so much out of her bottle and her private pocket. I left this school without having acquired even a taste for liquor. 11My next was one of those schools whose excellences are rated from , their charges. It stood and stands about a couple of miles from London; 1 and I stood there at a cost to my father of about 1201. a year, and at a cost to myself of incalculable pain and vexation. \ The master, Doctor —, was old, consequential, and peevish. He sat wigged in state, in a parlour communicating with the school-room, and heard some of the boys their lighter lessons. His sonpresided in the school-room. He was a fat, little man, with small, twinkling, cun- ning, black eyes, and a mighty heavy but ready hand: more of him anon. He was assisted by a French usher, an Emigrant of good family and bad temper. The Doctor was irascible, and not dainty in speech, though a gentleman in manners.) We used to recite Watts's Hymns or Gay's Fables to him at sunrise ; and when we committed a blunder, he would cry, " Shah, bah !—bah, shah !—you are not fit to carry (eq.; to the Devil." This flattering estimate he sometimes followed up t, • with the book, or his wig, addressed straight to the peccant head. We had not much, however, to do with him ; and his son was not a more agreeable character. All the petty passions flourished in that tub of a man ; and I never met with one who was so frankly unjust and tyrannical. My class read Ovid's Metamorphoses to him ; and when we came to anything smutty, he inordinately chuckled over it, and took care the allusion should not be lost to our attentions at least. He was as ignorant as most masters, but pretended to instruct in natural philosophy; and when, on one occasion, descanting upon the contrary currents of wind, he desired us to remark the barges sailing in nearly opposite directions on the river which ran before the house, as exempli- fying the ple,enomenon. My brother objected, that they did not sail upon different winds, but in different trim, some beating to windward on op- posite tacks, and others going free ; —for which corrective comment, lie instantly thrashed him liberally. French was the accomplishment on which the great stress was laid; and we were obliged to speak it, or what we called French, in the school ;—a consequence of which has been, in my case, an unconquerably vicious pronunciation, and obsti- nately corrupt idiom. The school was divided into three orders, and three " marks" were instituted for the punishment of the speakers of English in them. These marks were passed by one offender to an- other upon his commission of the same fault ; and three times a-day they were called for, and the unlucky possessor subjected to penalties in money, or blows if he held the mark three times running, as we phrased it. One evil day, a big boy of the first division, called sud- denly home, gave me the mark to pass for him : I heard an abundance of English, and endeavoured to pass the mark ; the big ones refused it, and threatened me with a licking for my presumption. The marks were called for by the master in one of his sternest moods: I brought up my refused mark, big with the story of my wrongs ; but before I could deliver myself of the first ready word, he knocked me down with his clenched fist, and in falling my head bounded against a form. The enormity of injustice had the effect of composing me ; I gathered my- self up body and mind, got upon my legs again, and very coolly told my story of explanation and complaint. He said not a word. The fines for the mark were collected by this amiable under master, and every quarter an account of them was rendered to the school, and the fund applied by vote of the majority to some purpose of common utility or pleasure. W. B. (for so I will describe our man) generally suggested the desiderata ; and on one occasion he recommended, as most eligi- ble, the purchase of a garden-mould-sifter. We all stared, for though some of us had a few square feet of garden in the play-ground, the ne- cessity or even use of a mould-sifter had never occurred. But to hear was to obey, and the mould-sifter was carried without a dissenting voice. When it was sent hiime, it was stuck up in the play-ground, and we shovelled earth against it for two days, but on the third day it had dis- appeared; and W. B. told us, in his blandest manner of good humour, that he had borrowed it of us for use in his own garden (he inhabited a house near us); and we never saw or heard more of the mould- sifter. It had been a ministerial job, but we had no opposition among us. We were all ayes. -W. B. succeeded to the school on his father's death, and embroiled himself with his neighbours in such style as to produce the eel& of publicity through the newspapers.
The French usher had more than a French usher's usual authority, as French was the staple of the school. He was rather spiteful than systematically tyrannical ; and unless some offence was given to' his gentlemanly feelings, he spared us with a quiet disdain On half. holydays, he would walk up and down the school for some time before he went out, humming a minuet, and stepping to it. We of course settled in our own minds, that on these days he taught dancing, and despised him accordingly. We had a third occasional usher, a writing-master, who came twice a week to teach a hand which I am sure has, at least in one instance
afflicted even the skilled readers of printing-offices. I remember of this man is his telling us, with the glee of news, the tidings that his wife, Mrs. —, had burst a blood-vessel, and thrown " up'ards and down'ards, up'ards five gallons of blood ; "—an idiom and accuracy of fact which greatly delighted us, without especially enhancing our re- spect for the caligraphic character. One regulation of the school, having a remarkably decorous conse- quence, deserves note. Immediately before bed-time, prayers of some length were read; and it was a law that the boy who first after the " Amen" touched a candlestick and cried " Cette chandelle," was en- titled to carry it oft' for the use of his dormitory. The consequence was, that during the whole period of prayer, we were employed in finessing our approaches to the candles, or watching the manceuvres for the struggle ; and the instant the " Amen" was delivered, a riotous scramble took place, and a score of voices were roaring " Cette chan- delle." A foreigner might have supposed that " Celle chandelle" made the most earnest part of our devotions. In the play-ground, we did not fare much better than in the school. The boys ran big, as we expressed it, and bullying was the order of the place. There were two or three who had turned their twentieth year; a, category in sehoolboyship, which is, I believe, in present times unknown. These hulking fellows having outgrown their school exercises, amused their leisure with thumping and screwing the little ones. We had for breakfast buttered rolls: every connoisseur of but- tered rolls is aware that the bottoms, in respect of their saturation with grease, are much more esteemed than the tops ; and these bot- toms were arbitrarily exacted from us as fines by the big boys, some of whom would rejoice in counting a revenue of half-a-dozen or more bottoms a-morning. They would pick quarrels after the lion and lamb model with us ; and then, in commutation for blows, take from us our bottoms for a certain number of mornings ;—had they taken from us another sort, the possession of which only served for our grief, many would have been far better pleased. During the whole time I was at thin school, I never ate but the one bottom of my first breakfast ! I was the child of tops ; and I do think the disappoint- ments I then suffered in rolls have given a somewhat atrabilarious time to my temperament. Imagine the anguish which rends the soul of a buy, who, seeing before him a smoking hot roll fretting and oozing its dear grease, is compelled, with watering lips and unwilling hand, to separate the better and the butter half, and convey it to the gluttonish churl who has extorted it by tyranny and injustice! But such enormities were permitted at this school. Nay, they took place under the eye of the master, who breakfasted and dined with us. At dimmer, by the la?, another annoyance assailed us—our stomachs were bombarded with dumplings : but for this we had a resource—they passed into our pockets, and thence to a meet destination, without having defiled with their filth our alimentary canals. In the play-ground the bullying system had undisturbed sway. One favourite sport was this. A hole was dug about eight feet lona- by five, and about six deep. Into this hole the younger boys were thrnsl, till it was crammed full. The game then began, by the clnudspIiee, as it was phrased; that is, the big boys threw themselves doe 0 on the heads of the confined mass, and sprawled, plunged, and floundered upon them, as in the action of swimming. Some of the oppressed were always forced down, and trampled upon by their struegling
felloe- sufferers ; but, strange to say, it never ended in actual murder—an escape which surprised me then, and surprises me when I think of it to this day.
Of course the working of this system of tyranny was to make every boy a bully, according to his capability of bullying. The big oppressed the little, and the little solaced himself by tormenting the less ; and our authorities 'absolutely seemed to regard the instances, when they were brought to their knowledge in the shape of complaint, (which rarely happened), with a favouring toleration. For a strong example:— Lords' sons were here, as everywhere else, held in great regard by our superiors male and female ; and there were two Honourable. eP--Ls extremely petted, and frequently interrogated or informed of their parents health—ai, " Master P. you had a letter or present from your father to-day ; I hope his Lordship is well ?" or, " 'Waster P. saw your noble father Lord A. ride through Piccadilly this morning, and he seemed in excellent health ;" or, " Master P. your father Lord A. made an excellent speech in the House of Lords last night." These Master P.s were boys whom it was within my ability to mal- treat whenever the Devil thereunto moved me ; and it so happened, that one of the Honourable little persons having one day incurred my displeasure, I rolled him instantly in a corner, which was ene o, the
many credits of our school. Redolent of ammonia, lie into
the rushed the presence of the schoolmistress, (none but a pet would have had de audacity to complain), and evidentially scented his wrongs while spoke them. 1 was called for. It was an awful moment. I would ha‘ gladly disposed of one more than all the bottoms that ever coula.1 X' hilted from me. The accusation NS as quoted against me by time nnstr, and whined out something about the great regard I had for I --, and was dismissed with a mild rebuke. So tolerant were the authorities of bullying. Once I was thrown down in the play-ground, and severely bruised on the point of the hip. It swelled frightfully, and I walked lame. There happened to be a lad lame by deformity in the school,-(B--a, you will remember it)-and seeing me walk across the room limping on the same leg, and mistaking, the act for mockery, he jumped up, sprung upon me, thrashed me with the best pair of fists in the school, and flung me down again on the injured part. The consequence was a tremendous exasperation of inflammation. The schoolmistress's at- tention was called to my state by a servant, and she applied proper re- medies, but asked no questions. It is right, for the honour of a good nature, to add, that when B--L discovered how hastily and unjustly he had punished me, he became my fast friend and patron, and never suffered any boy to bully me. His conduct was different indeed from that of our brutal sub-master in a like case of error.
(To BE CONTINUED.)
Previous page
