UC-NRLF $B 303 507 ^"^iS^ rn^ V u ^ THE ANCIENT WAYS. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/ancientwayswinchOOtucl'S?K^' TABULA LEGUM. only by candles in sconces ; the boys sitting at their " scobs '* or movable desks, while commoners were accommodated also at 40 THE ANCIENT WAYS AUT DISCE. friendly scobs, or sat at two long " commoner tables." Against the walls were the *' Tabula Legum," or rules of the school, and the curious THE JUNiaR 41 " Aut disce " tablet, offering the threefold alternative of study, with a mitre as its reward ; timely withdrawal to wield the lawyer's pen or soldier's sword ; the " sors HEAD-MASTER S SEA'l . tertia " of the rods, which stood throughout school time in a compartment of the Head- master's seat, and were used when school ended. Order was preserved by two prefects, 42 THE ANCIExNT WAYS the " Ostiarius " or door-keeper, and the " Bible-clerk," exempted from lessons for police work, and armed each with his ground ash. At six o'clock we rose and stood in ranks, while the prefect of school read a form of thanks for the " religion and good learn- ing " which, by the bounty of our Founder, we had imbibed throughout the day ; and the junior relapsed once more from the student into the bondslave. Unbroken were his toils during the next hour and a half In chambers the half- faggot was to be lighted, the great kettle filled and hung, the boilers or coffee-pots and " toe pan-boilers " placed on the iron bar which fronted the fire. Then, smutty with these tasks, the junior rushed up in hall, en- countering on the staircase the " deputy "— a boy whose function it was to " cut into " belated fags with his ground ash, and who THE JUNIOK 43 discharged that duty resolutely — to find him- self menacingly awaited in his double capacity of breakfast fag and junior at end. For the HALF-FAGGOTi " end " he had to fill the " bob/' or gallon jug, with beer from the cellar, to make the mustard, replenish the salt-trencher and 44 THE ANCIENT WAYS pepper-box, then to get supper for his prefect lord. On Tuesdays cold roast beef was provided for the prefects' tables ; it was eatable, but capable of improvement by the addition of fried potatos. So the breakfast fag pounded and mixed potatos, saved from dinner, with butter, salt, pepper ; fried, and tossed, and browned them. Thursday's beef was unsavoury without further cooking : it was fried with sliced onions and served with made gravy. On other nights the supper consisted of coarse cheese, which required toasting. A trencher was covered with thin bread, sur- mounted by slices of cheese, and held to the fire at an obtuse angle till the cheese was toasted ; then pepper and mustard were laid on thickly, and again heated till they rose in blisters on the surface of the cheese, when the savoury viand was presented. Of course these processes left the fag no time for THE JUNIOR 45 supper ; so soon as they were concluded he had to forage for knives and trenchers, to be taken down into chambers for " mess," a private meal of tea and coffee enjoyed by the prefects and by the boys who had " got off fagging." They were in the custody of a hideous old servitor called Purver, twin brother in manner and appearance to the crazy storekeeper who bought David Copperfield's jacket at Chatham ; and had to be abstracted from him by stratagem : without the proper complement a junior dared not show himself in chambers ; and if he lingered long to obtain them penalties awaited his unpunctuality. Down he came at last, " swept up " in hot haste, put on a fresh half-faggot, cleaned the greasy candlesticks attached, with mould candle, snuffer, and extinguisher, to each set of toys ; keeping the while chronometrical note of fleeting time by 46 THE ANCIENT WAYS watching out for and heralding the quarters as they struck until half-past seven. During this time mess went on merrily, the valets waiting on their masters, the other boys upon themselves. Sometimes a good-natured philan- thropist would present a junior with " Sus," the much diluted residuum of his own tea or coffee ; otherwise, as at supper time so at mess time, he practised abstinence. From half-past seven till nine was " toy-time " ; the boys preparing their lessons, and the prefects seated at their washing-stools or private tables, keeping rigid order ; while the juniors went into the election chamber to improve their minds by Bland's verses, under the super- intendence of Lee, the composition tutor. In chambers during toy-time prevailed a curious custom. In early English history, as the readers of Sir H. Maine or of J. R. Green are aware, no stranger might approach THE JUNIOR 47 TOYS. a village without sounding a horn as notice of his coming : so at Winchester no " pere- grine " might turn the handle of a chamber 48 THE ANCIENT WAYS door without whistling to show that the visitor was a boy not a master. If, as happened now and then, a boy was physically incapable of whistling, he must cry "Scald- dings" — i.e. " Soundings ; " from the old English scellan, whence comes the Scandi- navian scald, a sounder aloud or singer of heroic poems. Heavy penalties were annexed to the omission of the ceremony ; I imagine that we were unconscious alike of its historical and its philological force. A few minutes before nine the chapel bell began ; at once from every chamber might be seen to issue a junior bearing on the end of a stick a red-hot plate of iron, which he cooled in water from the tap or " conduit " in the court. These were the " functiors," fitting into a staple over the fireplaces, and supporting a farthing dip to be burnt as a nightlight. Formerly, so the story THE JUNIOR 49 ran, the boys slept in darkness ; but a junior, vengeful beyond his years, conceived the idea of murdering in the night a boy who had bullied FUNCTIOR. him intolerably. He sharpened a knife, stole in the darkness to his tyrant's bed, and stabbed him to the heart ; but in the morning the E 50 THE ANCIENT WAYS tyrant rose up unhurt, while in the next bed lay the assassin's brother dead : he had mis- counted the beds in his nervousness. The effigy of a bloody hand on the wall commemo- rated the terrible incident ; and a night-light was introduced into each chamber, presumably that the mistake might not be repeated. The candles guttering down covered the functior with grease ; it was cleansed by being thrown into the ashes, where it soon became red-hot, and was cooled as we have seen. It not only ruled as a lesser light by night, but ministered to the " scheme," an invention by which, when the seniors wanted extra time for reading, the junior was waked at an early hour, that he might call them. A string attached to the socket of the functior wa? passed through the wooden canopy of the junior's bed, supporting books or trenchers tied up in a towel, and suspended exactly above his sleeping head. THE JUNIOR 51 The rushlight was measured off and shortened to burn the requisite number of hours, and so arranged that as the light burned down it should kindle paper disposed around the string: the string gave way, and down came the bundle on the sleeper's head. Chapel over, and prayers said, the junior lighted the functior for the night, and filled the toe-pan. In those days men and boys washed their faces, hands, feet ; and, except in summer bathing, that was all. " Our ances- tors," says Thackeray, " were the Great Un- washed." Toe-pan, however, was essential ; it was placed by the Toys of the boy whose turn had come to purify, and filled from the toe-pan boilers. But we have said that there were on an average ten boys in a chamber, and there are but seven nights in the week ; how were the necessities adjusted of the three remaining over ^ By a simple process, known as " second E 2 52 THE ANCIENT WAYS edition : " on three nights in the week the toe-pan already used was drawn to the bedside of the supernumerary, and his alluvium added to its deposit. To bed and to sleep now went the tired junior ; but disturbance was still in store for him. The prefects sitting up wanted the " mess-towel," or " fire-paper " for a fresh half faggot, and he was naturally roused to find them ; or beer was required for egg-flip, and the " nipperkin " holding the beer was in his custody ; or his snores demanded rough suppression ; or it was thought that a bolster- match between him and *' second junior " would be an improving spectacle ; or he was " launched," or " to-fit-tied." To *' launch " was to pull mattress, bed-clothes, and inmate briskly off the bedstead, the inmate falling on the floor, or into a neatly adjusted toe-pan. " To-fit-ti," a term borrowed from the As in Frasenti of the Eton Lathi Gramma7% was THE JUNIOR 53 effected by tying a pair of bands or a bat- string round the slumberer's toe, and pulling at it sharply ; his terrified awakening and cries of pain yielded obvious delight. So somehow, and at last, the *' dies tarn niger " wore itself away, and in default of other use for him the junior was allowed to rest. For a year I remained junior in chambers, first in fourth, afterwards in seventh chamber : then for two years I was a valet, no longer a universal drudge, but allocated to a special master, and dependent on his humanity or harshness. In this hazard I was fairly fortunate. One prefect whom I served was looked upon as a bully, but was uniformly kind to me ; he was eminent at games, and was known as " prufF," insensible to or proof against pain. It was on record that in a football " hot " he received a kick which was 54 THE ANCIENT WAYS heard all over the field. Like the Dying Gladiator he too " heard it, but he heeded not ; " he went on with his game, remarking with a chuckle, " somebody got that ! " Another of my suzerains was ordinarily kind, but liable to paroxysms of rage. I was sitting up in bed one night doing Latin verse, while he was at his washing-stool. Something that I said angered him ; he grasped the short heavy iron shovel in the fireplace and flung it at me with all his force. I ducked behind the mahogany writing-desk which stood beside me on my toys ; the missile took ofF a corner of it as clean as by the stroke of a hatchet. Had my head been there, I should not be now recording the adventure. So passed three years ; after which we were still liable though rarely subject to occasional fagging ; we had " got off valet," and were upon the whole our own masters. I felt myself grow- THE JUNIOR 55 ing in body and mind ; enjoyed school-work, received praise for composition and construes. I still possess several of my " verse tasks/' with preceptorial words of eulogy in the margin, and can recall the warm encomium passed once on my construe of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Fourth Georgic, by the master, Hermann Prior, an eccentric, enthusiastic scholar. In 1 847 I was made " Prefect of Hall," captain that is and commandant of the whole school both college and commoners. It was said by them of old time that there were three absolute rulers in the world ; the Great Mogul, the captain of a man of war, and the prefect of hall at Winchester. Even in my time his power for good or evil was incalculable, sustained by centuries of precedent, and by the whole force of magisterial authority. Once only a boy, too big for me to coerce physically, rebelled against my power. I 56 THE ANCIENT WAYS referred the matter to MoberJy, the boy being a commoner and under his jurisdiction : he was flogged, and vanished from the school. I met him afterwards at Oxford, and he bore no malice. Feeling strongly the serious re- sponsibility of my new position, I set myself to the abatement of existing evils. There was a time-honoured abuse by which our " battlings," or shilling a week pocket-money, was given away to certain old college servants, already in receipt of pensions, and with no claim on the boys, who were not consulted as to this compulsory benevolence. I retain a letter from one of these old parasites, soliciting the customarj^SEif^ To this con- fiscation I put a stop at once, paying out the battlings, which passed through my hands, to the junior in each chamber, with a command to give every boy his shilling If any one then chose to subsidise Cruty, or Long John, THE JUNIOR 57 or Short John, or Bill Bright, or any other mendicant, he might do so — it would be no affair of mine. Of course the boys retained the money, and I earned their gratitude. The next reform was of a more serious kind. I knew that certain vendors or sweets and pastry were in the habit of taking " On Hills " (p. 63) ginger-beer bottles filled with brandy and selling it to the boys. I called together some of the big commoners who were not prefects ; put it to them that the custom was blackguardly and mischievous, that I was determined to stop it somehow, but that they could aid mo^n ending it informally and without scaiK'^aBK they pleased. They met me good-humouredly and promised to act at once. Accordingly, on the next half-holi- day, when I had sent the boys on to the hill, and was walking with some other seniors at its foot, we beheld three discomfited spirit 58 THE ANCIENT WAYS merchants, with empty baskets, deranged gar- ments, and in one case with a bleeding nose, descending angry and forlorn. The boys had ordered them to clear out and not to come again ; they had been cheeky, had shown fight, had of course been routed ignomini- ously, and came to me blustering about legal remedy. I recommended them to take the matter into court, and promised that I would enlighten the magistrate. They slunk away, and never appeared again. Later in my year of office I had to meet a case of cruel bully- ing by a college prefect. I took counsel with the other seniors, and in our joint names cautioned him ; on his persisting I brought the offence before the Warden ; an inquiry was held, and the tyrant " lost his hat," was degraded, that is, from his rank as prefect. I 1848 I won the Queen's Silver Medal for Oratory and Gold Medal for English Com- THE JUNIOR 59 position. I proudly preserve them both, and I have also the victorious essay. Its sub- ject, "The Moral Effects of the Love of Praise," is still pencilled in my school Horace as I took it down from Moberly's lips ; it reads to me as a very fair performance. When the electors came down in July, I received them as the head of the school with the " Ad Portas," a Latin oration at the college gates. That, too, I have preserved (p. 167). It happened that the second master, F. Wickham, had been lately married, and I introduced a compliment to his bride and himself. She was present with her husband : at the words " qui matrimonii gaudia jam nuper tentavit," he looked at her ; she blushed, and a smile went round the grave and reverend seniors. Not long ago I met a lady, an old friend of Mrs. Wickham, to whom at the time she had written an account 6o THE ANCIENT WAYS of the incident. " They said " — so ran her letter — " they said it was fine Latin, and it was a handsome lad who spoke it ! " The NAME IN SIXTH. severe ordeal of the election followed ; I have the roll of elected scholars in the old War- den's handwriting with my name at the THE JUNIOR 6i head, — for which, according to custom, I gave a guinea to his butler who brought it to me. So I left Winchester for New College ; and nothing was left of me except my name on a marble tablet above the prefect of hall's bed in sixth chamber. CHAPTER III MANNERS AND CUSTOMS " My son, of those old narrow ordinances Let us not hold too lightly." Coleridge's Piccolonimi. If to transcribe my record of a junior's life has compelled me to evoke painful memories, pleasanter associations are awak- ened, and a brighter side of Winchester life depicted, in the annals of our institutions and customs which I have next to chronicle. Mention has been made of '' Hills." Now a mere chalk eminence, disfigured by a hideous railway cutting, Mons Catharina stands out picturesquely in the recollection of older MANNERS AND CUSTOMS 63 Wykehamists. It rises a mile from the college, girdled half-way up by a deep fosse, Roman or Danish, and crowned with a clump of beeches. Thither went the whole school ST. CATHARINES HILL twice or thrice a week^ coerced like the souls in the Odyssey by the pa/SBos XP^^^^V of prefect of hall ; the inferiors ascending the hill, the patrician prefects wandering below at will, with the privilege of "taking off" 64 THE ANCIENT WAYS as a companion any inferior whom they pleased. " And in the grey of morning, on every Saint's Day still, That black-gowned troop of brothers was winding up the hill, There in the hollow trench, which the Danish pirate made. Or through the broad encampment the peaceful scholars played." It yielded a noble view ; below was the pretty town,* not yet overbuilt, with the graceful tower of the college, and the heavy Saurian length of the cathedral. In front was " Oliver's battery," whence Cromwell's cannon awed the city into surrender ; an old Wykehamist, Colonel Fiennes, marching his regiment straight to the college, to save it from the wreck and plunder which befell the town. Through a gap in the hill-ranges rolled the silver Itchen to the sea, and beyond it was visible on a fine day the Isle of Wight, HILLS 65 audible at all times the faint throb of the Spithead guns. Behind stretched for many a mile the bare treeless Twyford Downs ; while on the right stood up the Semaphore Hill, on which was planted the curious post with movable arms, by which at that time, when electricity was an infant, news was cumbrously flashed along a chain of heights from Ports- mouth to London. Readers of Monte Christo will remember how the count, " de- livrant un jardinier des loirs qui lui man- geaient ses peches," bribed the manipulator of the telegraphe at Montlery to falsify the message which should send down the funds, and ruin M. Danglars. From one to two hours was spent upon the hill top. Cricket, football, prisoners' base, rounders, were played ; entomologists hunted blues and coppers ; some " peaceful scholars " dug up the field mice which swarmed in the shallow 66 THE ANCIENT WAYS turf, to be taken home, immured in scobs, fed on nuts and apples ; others regaled on " grub " vended by " Mother Argos," a little withered old woman, who toiled up the steep with her two heavy baskets. Often one of the regiments quartered at the barracks came to shoot in the long valley below. It was in the reign of the old smooth-bore muzzle- loader " Brown Bess," which would hardly hit a haystack at a hundred yards. A large target was set up, and the soldiers shot in turn. If the target were touched, a thrill of pleasure ran through the spectators ; if by rare good fortune the bull's eye was hit, a bugle was blown, and five shillings presented to the marksman. On winter mornings there was usually a badger hunt. The badger was brought on in a sack, turned out and headed for the downs Then prefects and their ■proteges started off in chase. A badger's HILLS 67 ambling, clumsy gait is really swift, and taxed our best energies to keep up with him. If he took refuge in a hedgerow or a hole, he was driven out with dogs ; and so for ten miles out sometimes and ten miles back again the chase was followed, ending just in time to hear the loud " On " of prefect of hall, which brought the boys down the hill for the return home. If it rained heavily, the boys ran home without keeping rank or waiting for the signal : this was called " skirmish- ing on." In the summer evenings we had " Evening Hills " ; not ascending St Catharine's, but free to wander through the water meads. Delicious meads they were : year after year even now when the 8th of May comes round, I say to myself with a spring of recollection — " on this day evening Hills began." They were traversed by three broadish rivers, Simmonds', Old Barge, and F 2 68 THE ANCIENT WAYS the canal ; with countless smaller streams, ranging from "Adam and Eve," some twelve feet wide, to tiny irrigating rivulets. They yielded many bathing places : Tunbridge, Dalmatia, Bungay's Corner, Pot, Milkhole, Waterman's Hut. Pot was a disused lock, twenty feet deep ; Waterman's Hut was a rush — a " roush " we called it — against which only a strong swimmer could make way. At about fifteen years old I began tentatively to cleave the glassy wave in the shallower Tunbridge, and had achieved flotation to the extent of three or four successive strokes, when a senior boy, now a shining light at the bar, spied me from the bank, and told me I should go into Pot next day. I expressed alarm in vain. " I will pick you out if you sink, but" — he condescendingly added — " you won't sink." So next day in I went. I remember the first terror at finding no DOMUM 69 bottom, the instinctive striking out. " Not so quick," he shouted, and confidence came to me : I crossed the pool and came back again, a swimmer. Not long afterwards I saved a boy's life in the same place : he turned out badly, poor fellow, in after life ; the angel of Parnell's hermit, had he been beside me, would probably have held my hand and suffered him to drown. The accompanying view of the river is from " Donium Wharf" Upon it grew an elm called " Domum Tree," whose site is I believe still marked by a " Domum Cottage." About two hundred years ago — no one knows the date, and I suppose no one altogether believes the legend — a boy was condemned for some reason to spend his holidays at school. Melancholy and unfriended he dragged out solitary days beside the river under the shade of the tree, weaving his wretchedness into the 70 THE ANCIENT WAYS DOMUM WHARF, fine Latin song which not Wykehamists alone know as " Dulce Domum " ; finally drowning FISHING 71 in the river himself and his despair. No one has ever succeeded in translating the lines effectively ; Charles Wordsworth attempted them, but English verse was not his forte. The music, attributed to Reading, is singularly felicitous ; beneath the joyous strain moves an undercurrent of melancholy, manifest when it is sung by trained voices and in vocal parts, not bawled in the Discordia Concors of home- going schoolboys. Fishing was confined to the seniors ; the streams swarmed with trout, but to throw a fly in those clear chalk-bottomed waters required no small skill and practice. I was a devoted and successful brother of the angle, abandoning cipicket, from which indeed I was always alienated by the memory of clows and of middle stump. Some of our piscatory methods would have scandalised Izaak Walton ; I shall have to confess later 72 THE ANCIENT WAYS on that Frank Buckland and myself were inveterate and shameless poachers. Ignobler game than trout satisfied the juniors ; " crays/' or crawfish, were dislodged from behind stones and roots ; or " Tom Culls," better known as Miller's Thumbs, were speared cruelly enough with forks or pen- knives fastened to long sticks. Prescription accorded to these victims a close time, which terminated on Good Friday, a day known consequently as Tom-CuU-day. In winter, when fishing, poaching, bathing, were alike unseasonable, the seniors would walk to St. Cross, sometimes refreshing at the house of a queer old fellow known as Jupiter. St. Cross is the original of Hiram's Hospital in Trollope's Warden ; the legal proceeding as to malversation of its emoluments is historical, though much altered to suit the machinery of the novel. It was a noble ST. CROSS 73 74 THE ANCIENT WAYS building, reared in the twelfth century by Henry of Blois, King Stephen's brother, as a hospice or almshouse for old men, who attended service in the fine Norman chapel, and crawled about their quadrangle in black gown with silver badge. By the founder's statutes any wayfarer could demand at the porter's lodge a horn of beer and manchet of bread ; a bequest still maintained, and which we boys certainly did not permit to fall into disuse. The school games were cricket, football, and bat-fives, with an informal cricket, known as " small crockets," played with tizzy poole and wicket stump. Tizzy poole was a sixpenny tennis ball, bought of Poole the head-porter, a grave man in long blue coat, white neck- cloth, and tall hat, who sold also " snacks " or fivesballs, and bags of small brown bullet-like AMUSEMENTS 75 76 THE ANCIENT WAYS pears known as " Poole's pears." There was besides an under-porter, named Joel after the Minor Prophet : his predecessor was Obadiah, his immediate successor Nahum ; and I found his €lBq)\op last year in the lodge, answer- ing to the name of Habakkuk. Cricket matches were played between College and Commoners ; sometimes with a regimental eleven ; the annual matches, now dis- continued, between Eton, Harrow, and Winchester, took place at Lord's. There were two football matches in the year, ''twenty-two and twenty-two," and "six and six " ; the first less exciting from the large numbers in the narrow field, the other a tremendous exhibition of skill and savagery, one or more maimed boys being habitually carried in the course of it to "sick house," and their places taken by others. I remember an old Peninsular officer witnessing a six and AMUSEMENTS ^^ six, and telling us that he would rather charge a French regiment than go into a Winchester " hot." I remember too the sneer with which a distinguished scholar, looking on at a twenty-two, styled football " the accomplishment of a hippopotamus." The branch of antique athletics known formerly as " Pugilatus " was not neglected : fights in college came off on a triangular slip of grass called *' Sicily " ; in commoners at a still removed place * under the class-room windows. The most serious fight in my time was on Hills, between two commoners named Malleson and Twopenny. It was obstinately maintained, and the combatants were much disfigured : they washed the filthy witness from their faces before going home, but both retired into invalid seclusion for many days. Of sedentary games there were very few 78 THE ANCIENT WAYS Some boys played chess, draughts, back- gammon, none, I think, cards. Sometimes two boys who were " bulky," flush of money that is, would toss for tizzies ; and we always had a Derby sweepstakes. In 1845 ^ drew the field ; some one offered me two shillings for it, but a fellow whose father was on the Turf said, " Don't, never sell the field, you don't know what may happen," so I kept it. It was a wet May, raining incessantly for a fortnight before the day ; and the course was a quagmire : the favourites were nowhere, and the race was won by a powerful horse called Merry Monarch, who came up from the under world ; and I swept the stakes. Thirty years afterwards I was in company with Mr. Crawford the great Turfite. The talk turned on Derby winners, and no one could remember the horse of 1845. I told it, to Mr. Crawford's great delight : he came over and sat by me after dinner and AMUSEMENTS 79 entertained me with racing anecdotes ; and as I discreetly held my tongue, went away believing that I was an authority on Turf annals. Only once, I think, a play was acted. It was Bombastes Furioso^ and was presented creditably in seventh chamber. Distaffina was a boy called Stephens, I forget the other actors. Cooking was a very popular indul- gence, carried on at night when we ought to have been asleep. Bedward discipline was curiously unreal. In theory, inferiors went to bed directly after chapel, prefects at lo o'clock, when the lights were, still in theory, extin- guished for the night. In fact, nearly all the boys sat up in bed preparing work, and prefects kept late hours, which they cheered by the composition of treacle posset, egg flip, apple dumplings boiled in white neckcloths, puddings, and other delights. Sometimes a 8o THE ANCIENT WAYS master " came about," unlocked the chamber door, and burst into the midst of us, but rarely indeed were any of us caught : — as he ap- proached the window the chamber was ablaze with lights ; when he entered all the lights were out, and all the boys apparently asleep ; and unless he could detect a culprit he was bound by custom to assume that the silence and the sleep were genuine. One night a plum pudding, tied up in a towel, was boiling merrily in the toe-pan boiler, when the head- master came about : the chamber was wrapped in prompt and deep repose, but the pudding was wobbling clamorously in its boiler. He lifted the lid, looked in, stirred up the junior — "Take that thing out, and meet me with it presently at Middle Gate "—and he went on his rounds. Every boy jumped up ; socks, vests, kerchiefs, were hastily soaked in water, done up cunningly in a towel, the whole soused AMUSEMENTS in the boiler ; and the junior went with the dripping substitute to meet the master. " Throw it up, Sir " — down it came with a "sands" ; THE FLAGSTONE iN FRONT OF CHAPEL. splash upon the flags. " Throw it up again '* — down once more it came flattened out and shapeless. " Now you may go back and eat your pudding," Back the junior went, to find 82 THE ANCIENT WAYS the real pudding served up and in rapid process of partition. A few boys were musical : towards the end of my time access was granted us to a room called " Potato-room," opening from hall stairs, where was a small organ, and there some of us practised glees. The strains of " Chough and Crow," " The Red Cross Knight," "Ye spotted Snakes," "Hark the Lark," " Glorious Apollo," float up to me through the years. We also sang catches at mess in the summer evenings, the fags arranging our washing stools under the chapel but- tresses. Our performances I suspect were very rude. A great number of boys were readers both of poetry and prose. In the forties Byron was still the rage ; many of us knew through and through not only Don Juan^ but Childe Harold and the Tales. Moore, now abso- READING 83 lutely forgotten, was no Jess popular ; 1 could once repeat whole yards of Lalla Rookh, Campbell attracted us by his drum and trum- pet lines ; Scott of course ; Tom Hood ; Southey, strange to say ; a few boys, of whom I was one, read Wordsworth and Coleridge, fewer still the Christian Tear. Young Mr. Tennyson was little known ; I never saw a copy of his poems, and first learnt of him by reading the "Dying Swan" in the Anthologia OxoniensiSy and by hearing Moberly repeat with exquisite intonation some of the " Oh Mother Ida" lines from CEnone. In prose we were all loyal to the Waverleys ; we read G. P. R. James's novels, remembered now only through Thackeray's Barbazure ; the Last of the Mohicans and its exciting kins- folk ; Sir Bulwer Lytton's Pelham^ Devereux^ The Disowned ; Disraeli's Henrietta Temple and Wondrous Tale of Alroy ; Ainsworth's G 2 84 THE ANCIENT WAYS weird 'Tower of London^ Windsor Castle^ Jack Sheppard especially. Lever, of course, we devoured, were in love with insipid Lucy Dashwood, and thought Fred Power a mould of manliness ; Marryat equally of course. Dickens's green numbers were appearing month by month ; Thackeray's yellows had not burst upon the world, but the "Snob Papers" were every week in Punchy which was sent to many boys from home. Prefects took in the Times \ I remember on the nth of April, 1848, getting it to myself while the other seniors were playing in Two Guinea Match, and reading the long account of the Chartist collapse in London on the day before. Books like the Wandering Jew and the Mysteries of Paris were handed round quietly, not generally read. I owed much myself to Warton's Essay on Pope, and first learned to enjoy Charles Lamb. A host of queer books besides, which HOLIDAYS 85 I have never since seen, come back to me with strange distinctness ; Valentine Vox^ Gideon Giles the Roper^ Rhydisel^ or the Devil in Oxford^ Crohoore of the Bill-hook. How many of them have floated down the stream of time I know not ; it is no great loss if they have been whelmed. Our holidays were rather frequent. At least once a week we had a " Remedy " or partial holiday, when we went on Hills, and sat in school for " Books Chambers " — meaning of phrase unknown — no master being present, but a prefect keeping order while we worked at our Latin composition. In token that the Remedy or Half-remedy was granted, a gold ring, called Remedy ring, inscribed anciently with the legend " Poten- tiam gero feroque," but in my time with the words " Commendat rarior usus," was given by the headmaster to the prefect of hall, 86 THE ANCIENT WAYS and returned next day. It was lost one night, I remember, and all the fags turned out with tollies or candles to hunt for it on the flint pavement, producing Rembrandtesque efi^ects in the half-lighted court. Friday was a half- holiday if we could obtain it ; but this de- pended on Moberly's humour and the adroit- ness of the prefect of hall in finding and urging reasons. I was very lucky in my approaches to Jupiter, and owed much popu- larity to the consecutive half-holidays which I secured, being dexterous in soliciting and slow to take refusal. The Queen in those days presented us with a Prince or Princess once a year ; the headmaster's wife was not negli- gent in that respect ; here were two certain grounds of application ; so was her Majesty's birthday. Perhaps some noted Wykehamist had married, or some old boy had distin- guished himself, or the senior fellow had SONGS 87 attained the age of ninety. Successfully I pressed the Chartist discomfiture on the loth of April ; but when I had petitioned two months earlier on behalf of the French Provisional Government, I received from Moberly, Monarchist and Tory, a snarling " Go away " which drove me back dis- heartened. The half-holiday granted, we went on Hills, and the rest of the afternoon was free. In summer cricket was played till sup- per time, the unhappy juniors watching out ; in the dark winter afternoons we assembled in school for " Songs." Three or four toe-pans were brought in, eggs, bangy, and nutmeg beaten up, boiling beer added, and we all sat round the great school fire, saufen unci singeuy to drink the flip thus made, and to vociferate the songs which our predecessors had composed or handed down. Wonderful songs they were, in complexion mostly akin 88 THE ANCIENT WAYS to that which tipsy Cyril sang to the sur- prised girl-graduates. "A careless tavern catch, Of Moll and Meg, and strange experiences Unmeet for ladies." We sang of Ben Backstay, an ancient mariner whose head was bitten off by a shark, with a chipcho-cherr y-cho-fol-di-rol-di-rido ; — of un- fortunate Miss Bailey — (one of us turned her sorrows into ringing Latin verses, which I still preserve). There was a coarse "Beer song," and an exceedingly clever " Oxford Freshman," both the work of George Cox, who died early as a Fellow of New College, leaving behind him a masterly satire, now very scarce, called " Black Gowns and Red Coats." " Carrion Crow " we sang, and " Young Lobsky," quoted by Kinglake in Eoihen^ the " Miller and his three sons," the " Breeches and the Petti- coat," a truly remarkable idyll; the west LEAVE OUT 89 country " Poacher " and '' Fox "; the " Three Jolly Postboys"; and a splendid carol superior to its company, " The Siege of Seringapatam." Imagine some seventy boys round a roaring fire, yelling out this queer ribaldry in unmelo- dious unison, dipping their pint cups into a toe-pan between each of the songs, and you have William of Wykeham's children recreating in their " softer hour." Every saint's day was a holiday and " leave out day ": they occurred nearly once a month, though we heretically bemoaned the shabby liturgical economies by which, in certain cases, two saints would club to make one holy-day. Early leave out was from 6 a.m., immediately after chapel, for boys invited to distant friends; from 2 p.m. for those whose hosts lived in the town. The early leave was a delicious experience : once a year I had a days' rabbit shooting at Masonstoke, some ten miles off, a 90 THE ANCIENT WAYS group of US driving through the fresh autumn morning, in one of "Watt's traps." Mr. Keble Uved at Hursley, five miles away, and to him I frequently went with a boy called Cornish, son of the author of the lines on the Redbreast, inserted in the Christian Tear} Keble was a small, simple-looking, modest- mannered man, with nothing suggestive of his great ability and fame : we spent our day rambling in Sir William Heathcote's park, rowing on his pond, and climbing the ruins of old Merdon Castle. Two of my uncles were captains in the navy ; and ^ Christian Year, Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. The stanzas are inserted for the sake of the phrase " calm decay," which Keble adopted in his poem. It is curious that he, poet and Professor of Poetry, should not have recognised the words as written by Southey in his Occasional Pieces thirty years before. " The calm decay of nature, when the mind Retains its strength." LEAVE OUT 91 when their ships were in harbour I had leave out to Portsmouth, petted by the officers, and made free of the splendid three- deckers with their thousand men and hundred and twenty guns, which at that time ruled the waves. I knew barristers on circuit, and officers at the barracks. Amongst the former was "Dick" Sewell, Fellow of Magdalen, whose fine poem on the Temple of Vesta won the Newdigate in 1825. He would take me into court, where Cockburn was leader, with Crowder and Serjeant Kinglake beside him ; then send me to dine alone at his lodgings, where I found a roast fowl, a pint of champagne, a novel, and a tip. Of many regiments the 49th comes back to me most distinctly. All its officers, Adams, the grey-haired colonel, Faber, the senior major, who had taken honours at Oxford, Glassbrook, the adjutant, down to Powell, the ensign, who had lately 92 THE ANCIENT WAYS left Winchester to join, made much of us, taught us to play whist, saw to it paternally that we did not drink too much at mess. But the saturnalia of the year, for all but the senior boys, was the election week. School work ended on the Saturday, with prize-giving, a ceremony which took place privately in the Warden's library. Before me as I write is a list of those who had won prizes, or '* got books," as it was called, in Moberly's handwriting. My name comes first, and is followed by that jof Raynes. I had first choice, and fixed my eye on a handsomely bound copy of Keble's Pr^Iectiones Academics. Raynes stood be- hind me with second choice ; I felt that he coveted the book ; so did I, but I ought to have been generous and yielded it. I was not : it is still in my library : in all these years I have never looked at it without self-reproach : I hope Raynes, now a distinguished Cam- ELECTION WEEK 93 bridge tutor, has forgiven me. On Monday came the electors, received " ad portas " by the boys ; the examinations for New College with the sham election to Winchester filled the time till Thursday, great dinners being held in hall on the last three days. Old Wykehamists came in crowds, playing cricket in Meads, at which the fags watched out, but were handsomely remunerated with tips. Each of the six electors had the privilege of nominating a " child," who received a guinea from his temporary parent, was released from fagging for the week, dined in hall at a special table, and had dessert afterwards in the Warden's house. I was child in 1844 to Newton Young, a friend of my father, who, afterwards, as sub-warden, admitted me to a fellowship at New College. The election to New College was severe as regarded the number of books demanded, and was so far a 94 THE ANCIENT WAYS reality, that a boy who did badly would be incapacitated ; otherwise the order of names in school was generally retained. The seniors were divided into three '' Fardles " ; the old English word, as readers of Hamlet remember, for parcel or bundle ; " senior fardle " containing the immediate candidates for scholarships. On Thursday " Domum " finished the proceedings. Visitors came from all the country round, the regimental band played in Meads, and the boys sang Domum at intervals. The evening closed with " Domum Ball," at St. John's Rooms, the superannuated prefects being stewards. Next morning at 5.30 we all marched round court behind the second master, singing an old Latin hymn, " Jam lucis orto sidere " ; received our journey money, breakfasted together at the George, and scattered home- ward. SCHOOL WORK 95 Something should be said about the school- work. We were " suckled on Latin and weaned on Greek ; " little else was cared for. At least fifteen hours in the week were given to Latin composition ; not, strange to say, to translating into Latin, the form of exercise current and prized at Oxford, but to so-called " original " composition, writing on a given theme. On Tuesdays we composed a " Verse task," a " Prose task " on Thursdays, on Saturday a " Metre task ; " besides frequent short epigrams known as " Vulguses." In the election chamber our powers were tested by a " Varying ; " — a subject was given out by each elector ; every boy composed without pen and paper and repeated six Latin lines on the theme which he preferred. The sixth form emitted periodical " Declamations," and wrote six times in the year a " Gatherings," abbreviated to " Gags " in boy language, a Latin critique on 96 THE ANCIENT WAYS some Greek play or oration. Very rarely indeed a theme was given for English writing. I remember only two ; an essay on " Mer- cenary Warfare," and a free translation of the Nisus and Euryalus episode from the ninth Mneid. I sat up all night to write this last ; adopted Scott's style and metre ; became in- spired towards morning, and sent in 1 20 lines, annexed to which I can still read, in Moberly's delicate hand, the flattering comment, " ex- quisitely careful, tasteful, and good." Fluency in Latin prose we certainly acquired ; to the " elegant imbecility of Latin verse " I cannot think that we were highly bounden. I recall two or three hundred boys who wrote faultless Latin verses ; I recall only three who wrote genuine Latin poetry. These three boys were poets ; they wrote poetry although they wrote in Latin, and would have been poets none the less had they never scanned a line. To all the SCHOOL WORK 97 rest versification was a mere mechanical process, exercising hardly more influence on their taste, refinement, imagination, than would have been effected during the same period by the dili- gent compilation of Chinese puzzles. Dean Milman's simile is a just one ; elegant com- position is a Cinderella slipper ; it fits one foot in a hundred, and the rash attempt to put it on cripples the ninety-nine for life. We learned by heart an incredible amount of Latin. Once a year, at the end of " long '* or summer half-year, came " Standing up ; " a great effort of repetition for which we had prepared ourselves during several months. The lines were said in eight lessons ; the largest achievement on record was by Algernon Bathurst, now a revising barrister, who took up 2,000 lines a lesson, 16,000 lines in all. The most remarkable effort in my time was 1,600 lines a lesson, by H. Furneaux, 98 THE ANCIENT WAYS known since to scholars by his admirable edition of Tacitus. Some of us crept near to hear him rattle off his lines ; Wordsworth sat smiling and twisting his ring as was his wont when pleased : — took presently the ''Standing-up-paper," on which was noted the list of authors tendered, and wrote upon it "And still the wonder grew That one small head could carry all he knew." I must not forget that some care was devoted to elocution, prompted by Bishop Maltby's prizes, and by the Queen's annual silver medals. Both these I was so fortunate as to obtain ; the first as a young boy, for reciting the famous passage from the Giaour^ " He who hath bent him o'er the dead ; " the second as a prefect, for an oration of Burke's. Week by week in *' Easter time," as the period was called from the beginning of April to the middle of May, all SCHOOL WORK 99 the boys in turn recited publicly some well- known passage, being laboriously coached by the prefects : — then, as the result of these trials, a few picked boys performed at " commoner- speaking " before the Warden, masters, and invited guests. I retain the roll of commoner- speaking for 1848 ; it contains twenty-two pieces from Shakespeare, Paradise Lost^ Childe Harold^ Scott, Campbell, Pope, Coleridge, Thomson. My own recitation, the only one not English, was Horace's " Ibam forte Via Sacra," which I undertook at Moberly's request. Mathematics and French formed nominally part of the curriculum. The mathematical master, Desborough Walford, was a man much too good for his thankless post, struggling in vain against the fact that, his subject not counting in the school marks, no one could be expected to care for it. He H 2 loo THE ANCIENT WAYS kept order in his class-room, somehow filled the time, sent in boys for the annual Duncan prizes — " senior and junior Dungy " as we called them : but I confess that I went to Winchester at twelve years old able to work a quadratic equation well, and left it at eighteen, competent to perform the same task badly ; and my experience was that of most other boys. Walford had an assistant, named Minchin, on whom all manner of pranks were played. In those days straps were worn, and Minchin's trousers were strapped tightly over his unfashionable half-boots or " haves." When he stood upon a desk to light the gas, the boy nearest to him would slit the strap with a sharp penknife, and the trouser would fly up the poor man's leg. Apart from these outbreaks of what Bassanio calls " pure innocence," the mathematical room was decorous. The French class-room was SCHOOL WORK loi at all times a bear-garden. The master was a Monsieur Arnati ; a good fellow probably in private life, but with a capacity for furious anger, which lacked no stimulant that the fiendishness of boy malice could apply. It was thought a pungent joke at that time to say " Waterloo " to a Frenchman ; and the spell, tried on poor Arnati, never failed. Amongst his worst tormentors was a boy called Dewar. " Mossoo," he would say, " weVe got a picture at home, of the battle of Austerlitz, and you are there in front on a beautiful white horse." " Now, my boy," caressingly answered the Frenchman, who had fought as a cavalry soldier on the famous 2nd of December, *' is that true ^ " — " No-o-o-o " — with a scream of derision ; and a single combat would ensue, Arnati striking blindly with his cane, Dewar dodging him under desks and forms, the whole class ecstatically I02 THE ANCIENT WAYS taking part. German was learned by a few boys, but the master, Dr. Behr, was as amiably and irrelevantly conversational as Herr Stohwasser in Vice Versa : such of us as came to read or speak either language in after life, did not learn them at Winchester. The system of punishments was primitive and simple. The mildest form was Imposi- tion, or " Impos," lines usually to be written out ; a foolish invention, for it involved no discipline, and spoilt our handwriting. A random sentence of so many hundred lines was easily worked out ; four quill pens deftly tied together enabling us to write four lines at once ; but a definite task left no room for this. I remember Gunner, the master of "Junior Part," ordering me to write a hundred lines out of some history book. PUNISHMENTS 103 I sat Up at night writing till I was too sleepy to hold the pen, and only seventy-five lines were done. I took it to him ; he accepted and tore it, and I retreated joyous ; but his eye lighting presently on the fragments at his feet, it occurred to him that they were incommensurate with the amount specified. He called me up, and asked if the imposi- tion was complete. Our school code justified telling lies to a master, though not to a boy ; and I unhesitatingly answered yes ; he told me to mark off on it each line ; I divided it neatly into a hundred sections, but they did not tally with the model, and I was found guilty of a complicated cheat. The next day was a saint's day ; and when the leave out roll came down, my name had been written on it but was erased ; I was " sconced leave-out." The eighth com- mandment, if it be the eighth which takes 104 THE ANCIENT WAYS cognisance of mendacity, was held loQsely in another point. Stealing from a school- fellow, of course not money, but knives, schoolbooks, and etceteras of daily use, was known as " bagging " — " convey the wise it call " — and earned no obloquy : nay, a dexterous thief, at Winchester as at Sparta, was held in some- repute. There were in commoners two famous " bagsters," K and G ; wagers were laid as to which would bag most articles by a given day. K prowled hither and thither like Bret Harte's Chinaman, beguiling casual chattels into his pocket and securing them in his toys. G remained inactive till the night before the day appointed, when he came down softly in the darkness, forced the lock of K 's toys, and transferred their contents to his own. Of course flogging was an institution PUNISHMENTS 105 honoured by frequent observance. The implement, faithfully depicted on page 40, was composed of four apple twigs, " quadri- partita virga," neatly bound on a wooden handle, and was invented by a certain Warden Baker in 1454 ; the two rods always standing erect and conspicuous in a recess of the headmaster's seat. The victim was told to " order his name " ; and the prefect in course for the day took the name to the head or second master with the words " Jussu tuo," or "jussu Domini detuli." In former times these cheques, collecting through the week, were all honoured upon Friday, "Veneris lux san- guinolenta " ; but in my day penalty followed close upon sentence. The ceremony was solemn, decorous, not — so said experts — particularly painful. Two boys manipulated the integuments of the kneeling culprit. io6 THE ANCIENT WAYS disclosing a handbreadth of what Shenstone calls *'His dainty skin, Fair as the furry coat of whitest ermilin," and to this space the operator applied his flagellum. Moberly's aim was sure, Words- worth's aberrant ; Moberly flung down the rod when its work was done with an air of disgust ; Wordsworth looked rampant and elated like Milman's Belvidere Apollo. "Burned his indignant cheek with vengeful fire, And his lip quivered with insulting ire." A punishment very rarely exercised was " standing under the nail " ; the criminal being elevated throughout school-time on a form beneath a peg or nail fixed in the panel- ling. I saw it only once ; a boy had been impertinent and the master lost his temper ; the offence was felt to be inadequate, and I believe this method of correction was never TUNDING 107 again employed. The ultima ratio was expul- sion. Once or twice in my experience boys were sent away, but they disappeared quietly without beat of drum. Formerly it was a very awful process. The whole school assem- bled in the Meads. A large gate, called " Non-licet Gate," used on these occasions only, was thrown open, the criminal's gown was stripped off, he was led out by the two senior boys, and the gate was locked against him. The practice of *' Tunding " acquired no- toriety some years ago by an animated corre- spondence in the Twies. It was inflicted, by prefects only, with a ground ash. It was in theory judicial ; smoking, ** shirking Hills," misconduct condemned as disgraceful by school sentiment, were punished with fewer or more stripes by a senior, the offender taking off his gown, and " standing round." io8 THE ANCIENT WAYS NON-LICET GATE. Tradition was rife in my time of a terrible tunding, from which the victim barely escaped with life. The worst I ever saw was inflicted BULLYING 109 by a college prefect on a commoner, and though nominally official, was accentuated by personal resentment. The boy made no cry, but reckoned audibly the 150 cuts as they fell ; then was for some days in danger. His father, a personage of some consequence, in- terfered, and the prefect was disgraced or "turned down." I remember many other cases in which the right of tunding was atro- ciously abused ; it was the barbarous main- stay of an iniquitous system. I am often asked if the receptive misery of junior years did not tend naturally to aggres- sive cruelty when the victim — " eo immitior quia toleraverat " — found himself entitled to inflict it later on. I suspect not. It taught us to exact rigidly all the powers and privi- leges of seignorship ; but while a prefect naturally brutal may have been savage in proportion to his sufferings as a fag, a kind- no THE ANCIENT WAYS hearted boy, like Corporal Trim's negro girl, learned mercy by suffering persecution. Left • to themselves, perhaps, the majority of boys are cruel ; but kindness to fags was part of the moral discipline directly or indirectly in- culcated upon seniors by Moberly and Wordsworth, just as manumission of slaves was impressed upon our forefathers by the Church. Hence, though some prefects were merciless enough when I first went to school, and though the vengeful erasure of earlier names carved on the wall of Meads attested the hatred inspired by their owners, the bullies in my later time were not ordinarily prefects, but big boys too stupid for the sixth form, by whom all the traditions of an evil past were cherished and converted into practice. Some of these, called " Candle Keepers," held an immunity from discipline except at the hands of prefect of hall ; they were almost BULLYING III without exception undesirable boys ; one or two of them were mischievous in every re- spect. Let me record one instance, uncon- nected with these, in which a case of bullying was avenged very terribly and very right- eously. A certain commoner, not a prefect, had so shamefully ill-treated a very amiable junior that his friends gave notice to remove him and stated the reason. The case was in- vestigated and the bully was expelled. Just before leaving he laid wait for and finally thrashed the innocent cause of his expulsion. The other boys had gone into school, the omnibus was at the gate, and the wretch thought himself safe ; but a little boy who witnessed the outrage hastened into school with the news ; a big strong commoner pre- fect named B rushed out, caught the criminal, and with fist and boot-leather gave him so tremendous a licking that the creature 112 . THE ANCIENT WAYS was taken to the station bleeding, helpless, literally half-killed. " Serve him right " was the verdict of boys and masters when the story became known. The school commissariat demands a less scanty notice than it received in Chapter II. The dinners were mutton, mutton, mutton, six days out of seven ; Wednesday was what Mr. Lowten in Pendennis called boiled-beef day. On the six Sundays after Easter we ate veal. On Saturday and Sunday there were puddings, of the kind known to boys as " stick-jaw " ; I never met with any one who tried them a second time. The puddings in commoners were, by comparison, delicious ; and a present of commoner pudding, brought into Sunday school, was valued as a delicate attention. It was not always so. I remember exchanging Wykehamical reminiscences with FOOD 113 Lord Chancellor Hatherley, who told me that in his day college puddings were choice, and commoner puddings uneatable. " We had " — he said — " a debating club which met at Wolvesey, the disused bishop's palace hard by the school ; and we expelled Sir Alexander Malet from the society because he sold his vote for a disper of college pudding." Once a year we had apple-pie, on a day called *' Warden's Om : " an abbreviation of the legend " Custos omnes ad coenam invitat," the pies being provided by his liberality. On school-days in cloister time, the closing eight weeks of the long half-year, we were let out from 4.30 to 4.45 for " bever-time." The bever — a word used frequently by Elizabethan writers to signify repast — was represented by a few slices of bread laid on each of the ends in hall : for these an exciting rush took place, and I think bread never 114 THE ANCIENT WAYS tasted so sweet. The fellows of the college, ten amiable elderly gentlemen who drew large incomes from the foundation with corre- sponding duties indistinctly formulated, used to invite select parties of boys to share a " fragment." This was served after hall upon a Saturday, and consisted invariably of hashed calves' head with New College pudding. The confectioner, La Croix, was an important adjunct to the regulation provender. His shop was out of bounds, but his minion, known as La Croix's boy, frequented " blue gate," in which was a barred orifice admitting cake and pastry, purchaseable at all times of the day ; for up to a pound or so La Croix was liberal as regarded " tick." In the summer months we brewed for ourselves bottled beer ; drawing off the college swipes into wine bottles, with a raisin, some bangy, and a little rice or wheat. In a few days the FOOD , 115 beer was effervescent, and made a delicious beverage. A not less interesting form of " lautiores epulae " was gooseberry fool, vended by Mother, the sick-house matron. A basin cost sixpence ; the purchaser took his choice of " husky or non-husky," one retaining the gooseberry skins, the other free from them. The sick-house itself was a picturesque cottage, controlled by Mother, the old nurse in a former headmaster's family, and Betty, a stalwart, rough-cheeked, grenadier-like but good-humoured maid. To resort thither as an invalid was called " going continent " ; the convalescent was said to " come abroad " ; if his recovery were suspiciously retarded and he was believed to be " shuffling," he was sometimes " firked abroad." For a month before election the seniors were exonerated from attending school, renting a room in I 2 ii6 THE ANCIENT WAYS sick-house for private work. I spent my " fever-time," as it was called, in Mother's little sitting-room, in company with Walter Thursby, long since dead, regaling in the intervals of work on Stilton cheese and perry, sent as a present by some New College men whom we had hospitably entertained. Sunday was, to quote the Princess Ida, " a day blanched in our annals " : even juniors were not much fagged until the evening. We lay in bed till seven, a " Sunday thoke " it was called ; a " hatch thoke " until eight o'clock falling only on " Founder's Comm : " or Commemoration day. The juniors on this morning cleaned the basins of the chamber, taking them out to conduit, and scrubbing them with salt to remove the dirt of the week — a process which had its draw- backs when mornings were icy or hands were SUNDAY 117 chapped. Chapel was from 8 till 9 ; then leisurely breakfast, then " Cathedral." Thither we all walked in procession, pre- ceded by a master, prefect of hall hovering along the line. The seniors sat near the communion rails, the juniors around the black marble tomb of William Rufus (now sacri- legiously removed lower down the choir); between the pulpit and the bishop's throne. I do not think we were much edified ; the choir was in those days a poor one ; the preaching canons, with the exception of Arch- deacon Samuel Wilber force, were a queer lot. One of them had a son in commoners, who laid a wager, and won it, that he would make his father laugh while in the pulpit. He is now an important dignitary of the Church, and would not thank me for commemorating his name. But we listened to the music, and gazed at West's great altar-piece, the " Raising Il8 THE ANCIENT WAYS of Lazarus." I used to contemplate the bishop's throne with its high canopy of intri- cate carved cusps and crockets, and reflect how easy and how pleasant it would be to clamber to the topmost pinnacle : I was greatly delighted when years afterwards I read in Barchester 'Towers that Trollope, while occupying the same seat, diverted himself with the same fancy. On rare occasions the throne was tenanted by the bishop, Sumner, a fine-looking specimen of the old orna- mental imposing scholarly prince -prelate. The rest of the day till four o'clock school was our own. We wrote letters home, strolled in Meads, generally rested and enjoyed ourselves. Chapel service was at five, with a sermon. The choir, ruled by a lame master, whom we called Tyrtasus, was feeble ; till later on Moberly taught the boys to join in chants SUNDAY 119 CHAPEL. and hymns. The sermons by Moberly and Wordsworth were a landmark in the week ; I I20 THE ANCIENT WAYS shall refer to them again. I am pleased to insert a picture of the old interior as it showed itself fifty years ago ; the present chapel has been greatly altered to suit the increased numbers, though I believe it even now holds only half the school. The evening was like other evenings ; hall, chambers, toytime, bed. One curious custom ought not here to be omitted ; the institution of the " Oath." At the age of fifteen every boy was compelled to take, in chapel, in presence of the Warden and of a legal witness known as "semper testis," a solemn oath which he had copied out, to the effect that he would obey the statutes, main- tain the privileges, and keep the secrets of the college, would reveal conspiracies concerning it, and in case of expulsion would renounce all actions or appeals against the authorities of THE OATH 121 the school. Its exaction was probably illegal, and it was discontinued, but not till after I left school. I swore to it in my turn, and still possess my copy of it. The topic of Winchester slang would require a volume to itself. The interest of that queer and voluminous argot lies in the antiquity of the words used, rather than in their etymological value. " Notions " they are called to-day, but in my time the phrase did not exist ; a few only are traceable. Amongst them is " tug," perhaps the commonest in use. If a boy uttered a truism, or related a well-known fact, he was met with a cry of " Tugs ! " ; a condensation of" Teach your grandmother to suck eggs." From this came the adjective " tug," nearly equivalent to trite^ applied to anything stale or familiar. 122 THE ANCIENT WAYS The word passed to Eton, whose scholars were at one time called " tug-muttons" or "tugs," in compliment to their daily food. " Cud " meant beautiful, attractive, pleasant. It was applied indifferently to a pretty girl or boy, a warm fire, a well-bound book, a choice trousers pattern, a succulent fruit. It was the old English couth^ well-known and so pleasing, as distinguished from uncouth^ strange and so repulsive. The terminal d is represented in " unked," a rustic term made classical by Cowper, which means unpleasant and uncom- fortable. To "sconce" or deprive (p. 103), was from O. E. sconce^ a poll-tax, hence any mulct or fine. " Nipperkin," a beer jug (p. 52), was the diminutive o{ nipper^ itself from nipy O. E. for a draught or sip, as a " nip of brandy." " Sus " was of course short for sustenance, " sog " for sovereign, " shig " for shilling — a SLANG 123 charity sermon was called a " shig sermon " ; — " brigs " for breeches; "haves" for half- boots ; " scob " is box reversed ; " disper " (p. 113) was from Latin disper tio^ to distribute. " Frowt," angry, was probably cognate to frown. " Firk," to expel or eject (p. 115) is Shakespearian. " Splice " is the German spleitzen^ to split. To " splice a pitch up " was to scatter a group of boys. To " splice a ball" was to part from it by throwing it up. Why " pitch up " should mean a group, and should also have done duty for the home circle ; why " lobster " should mean to shed tears, " thoke " (p. 116) to sleep, " mug " to study ; why " brum " should stand for impecunious ; why public praise from a master should be known as a " genuine " ; why a pebble should be called a " hollis," a srhall piece of paper a " vessel," a piece of 124 THE ANCIENT WAYS hardened dough a " ponto," a blow on the head a " con," a box on the ear (p. 33) a '' clow," are mysteries which, in the absence of contemporary clue to their origin, cannot perhaps be even conjecturally solved. CHAPTER IV. MEN. " Let us now praise famous men." Proper Lesson for Founder's Days from Ecclus. xliv. i. The Winchester of my period would not be complete without some notice of its per- sonalities, whether in the ranks of masters or of boys. Foremost among all was the War- den, Robert Speckott Barter. A "great broad-shouldered genial Englishman," his goodly bulk and stature typified the grand honesty of purpose, overflowing kindliness of heart, consistent loftiness of character, which dwarfed men far abler intellectually in the presence of this aj/af avBpwv. His school and 126 THE ANCIENT WAYS college fame as a cricketer survives in the word " barter," universally applied by Wykehamists to the pitch of ball known WARDEN BARTER. elsewhere as a " half-volley," from the tremendous hits which it afforded to his bat. Travelling once outside the coach in Devon- shire he had for companion an ill-con- WARDEN BARTER 127 ditioned, half-tipsy soldier, who molested with foul language a woman sitting beside him. Barter ordered him to be silent, the man answered coarsely ; Barter lifted him by his waistband, and held him off the coach over the road at arm's length till he yelled for mercy. A parishioner of his brother Charles Barter of Sarsden, shepherd to the squire, Mr. Langston, was famous for his un- rivalled power of lifting hurdles. Barter asked to see the feat ; the man collected and raised a formidable mass. Barter bid him add half-a-dozen more, picked them up and walked off with them. He told me once that he was a Winchester under-master when the Allied Sovereigns visited Oxford in 18 14. The day of their appearance in the theatre was a Remedy, but the days before and after were school days, and Barter was due in school. He came out of school in the after- 128 THE ANCIENT WAYS noon, walked to Oxford, getting in early in the morning, went to the theatre and saw the whole, dined and started back to Winchester, walking all night, and arriving in time for morning school. He was exceedingly hospi- table to the boys, entertaining almost all in turn, ever greeting them as they came in with his cheery proverbial " How's your father ? " He was, in fact, <^tXofei/oy in the widest sense ; '' Come and dine with me " was ever on his lips when, strolling through the streets, gloveless and with unbrushed hat, he encoun- tered an old Wykehamist or a county neigh- bour ; his pleasant housekeeper, " Mother Bovey," as we called her, never knew till within an hour or two for what number she might be called upon to provide. He was at home with all ages and with all professions ; old gentlemen of to-day, quartered anciently with their regiments in Winchester, still break WARDEN BARTER 129 forth into affectionate reminiscences when they hear his name. When the annual cricket matches at Lord's were exchanged for alternate matches at their respective schools between Eton and Winchester, he always entertained the Eton Eleven, Bidding fare- well to his opponents after their first match, the Eton captain said — " We beat you in most things — in buildings, in playing field, in com- forts, in numbers ; — but we have no one at Eton fit to hold a candle to your Warden " He was least effective in the pulpit ; his ser- mons were devout and earnest, but they lacked the literary finish of Moberly's and the electric force of Wordsworth's. He con- stantly drew on former stores ; 'here was at discourse on the " Witch of Endor " which we came to welcome as an old friend ; and it is on record that once going hurriedly into chapel, and snatching the uppermost docu- K. I30 THE ANCIENT WAYS ment from his drawer, he possessed himself of a sermon which he had preached in his father's country parish, and found himself presently exhorting the bewildered boys to bring their wives to the Communion as soon as possible after they had been churched. One other I recall, of much pathos and sweetness. The text was — " Son, remember" — with an appeal to the memories of home and parents as a talisman against temptation. We heard it more than once or twice ; on a certain occa- sion Moberly, whose preaching turn had come, was ill, and sent to beg that the Warden would take his place. Barter went to him in some distress—" There is no time to write a sermon ; I have one which would do, but I have delivered it several times — you have heard it — the text is ' Son, remember.' " " It will do admirably," said Moberly, — " only change one word ; DR. MOBERLY 131 DR. MOBERLY. instead of * Son, remember,' let it be — 'Son, forget ! ' " K 2 132 THE ANCIENT WAYS Graceful, brilliant, universally accomplished, morbidly refined. Dr. Moberly the head- master was as unlike the Warden as one good man can differ from another. The boys thought him a little unreal, affecting Arnold- isms in his talk and letters. Like Mr. F.'s aunt, he hated a fool, and omitted to conceal the fact ; so that people outside his own immediate set were afraid of him ; the bluff old Wykehamist squires and parsons who saw their ideal fulfilled alike in the virtues and the foibles of the Warden, were alarmed and repelled by Moberly's cold superiority of manner and stinging incisiveness of tongue. He was not, specifically, a good teacher, wandering away from the text of the book we were reading into historical, philosophical, literary disquisitions, which were deeply inter- esting and valuable, but were not " la guerre ; " — with the result that our purely grammatical DR. MOBERLY 133 knowledge, our " scholarship," on which in the , forms below Wordsworth had lavished all his powers, rusted during our work with him. So too in our Latin verses he cared more for beauty of thought than for felicity of diction, for the " purum antique lucis jubar : " those of my own old verse tasks which still bear his complimentary brand of ^' Bene^'' earned it, as I now see, by merit of sentiment rather than of expression. The themes he set were singularly various and good ; I subjoin some of them in the Appendix. He was intolerant of opinions differing from his own ; in a Latin essay on the quarrel between Charles and the Parliament, he was venomously angry with a boy who argued in favour of the Parliament. Nothing more pleased him than an apt quotation by any boy in class, or " up to Books." I remember his delight when I once declaimed in answer to 134 THE ANCIENT WAYS his appeal Sir John Denham's fine antithesis on the river Thames. He was great in Horace's Satires, not in the Odes ; and in Juvenal. Pindar was his favourite ; but his translations were too exquisite and far-fetched for human nature's daily food. I once tried to reproduce in the election chamber his rhap- sodical construe of the first Pythian Ode ; but when I came to render i3dac<; dy\ata<; dpxci by " Step, the Queen of Joy," the Warden of New College, Williams, staring at me sourly, thundered out " Talk English, Sir ! " His Greek Testament lectures were a rare treat ; in them disquisition was altogether appropriate : I can see him walking up and down before the form, pouring out a rich stream of talk which we eagerly scrawled down. I still possess his notes on the Gospels, written out from rough shorthand as they were delivered. We owed to him besides some admirable Shakespeare DR. MOBERLY 135 readings, delivered in hall by a professional named Russell whom he brought down. I recall the two parts of Henry IV.^ Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night, As Tou Like It. His sermons in chapel were beyond all praise : — the voice a sweet musical instrument, language flowing like a river, earnestness of delivery, perhaps one part artistic but certainly three parts real, made a harmony which the printed sermons cannot reproduce, except to those who recover as they read them his witchery of look and tone. Laus illi debetur, et a me gratia major : As I think of him in chapel and in school : as I look upon his beautiful recumbent figure in Salisbury Cathedral, I send after him into the Silent Land a stream of gratitude, affection, admiration. The second master was Charles Words- worth. The recent publication of his 136 THE ANCIENT WAYS Annals has widely popularised his name. They paint him foremost in repute and CHARLES WORDSWORTH. promise amongst the brilliant undergraduates of the most brilliant decade in this century ; CHARLES WORDSWORTH 137 as the intimate and in some cases the tutor of Gladstone, Manning, Hope, Acland, Canning, Lord Lincoln, Henry Liddell, the two Palmers, Edward Twisleton, Eardley Wilmot : — as the best scholar, oar, cricketer, skater, of his generation ; the author of a Greek grammar which drove all rivals from the field ; the master who regenerated Winchester as Arnold regenerated Rugby. Winning the Latin Ode at Harrow, at Oxford the Latin Verse, he was beyond all men of his time " durus componere versus," an adept in Greek and Latin versifica- tion. It is not the highest literary achievement ; it bespeaks the student rather than the poet, but it is genuine within its limits. There are minds which lack sympathy with nature, yet surrender themselves to the impressions of art : beauty must come to them not as Eve to Adam, in naked loveliness, but clothed in a language perfect of its kind, a language long studied 138 THE ANCIENT WAYS and dearly loved, whose lightest phrase or line wakes cultured associations, charged with the full force and magic of the whole literature which embalms it. Given the educational leisure necessary, not only for prolonged study but for practical imitation of great mas- ters in the admired tongue, and we have productions like Wordsworth's Mexico. Of passion, which is the essence of poetry, they are destitute ; their elegance is consummate. And the corollary, that accomplished classical versifiers rarely write good English poetry, is by him exemplified. Of his tributes to the native muse not one, except as his, is worth preserving; his English translation of Lowth's Cara Vale is puerile, his Greek rendering almost equal to the original. Whatever of noble thought, of touching sentiment, of transient humour, gained access to his mind, came draped in Greek or Latin. His grief at CHARLES WORDSWORTH 139 his wife's death found expression in a perfect I^atin couplet, untranslatable, unsurpassable. The little notes he sent sometimes from his seat in school to Moberly, teaching at the other end of the vast room, were Greek or Latin epigrams. He once found me, a boy of fourteen, sitting alone in school, reading a book and eating " plain-cake." He sat down by me, talked about the book, and shared laughingly a few morsels of my confection. Next day came from La Croix's a pile of sponge cake and cream, with the line As he lay wakeful in an attack of illness, he translated the morning and evening hymns of Ken and Keble into Latin sapphics and elegiacs. Roundell Palmer's fine lines on Winchester were reshaped as he read them into ringing Greek trochaics. His very I40 THE ANCIENT WAYS inscriptions in hotel books when on a tour were classical. Here is one which in his book he tries in vain to recover, remembering three lines only and remembering them wrong. Curiously enough I transcribed them from the Grimsel book many years ago, recognising them as his. )((j}p€LV, KaOevSetv, ia-OUiv, ttlvciv, ttoXlv )( /973 ^ml^iE^l?5 Af -nrisr^ O:^ C.A?-"tF*, '::> r/' LD2lA-20m-3.'73 (Q8677sl0)476-A-31 General Library _ University of Califorma Berkeley