Our School
WE went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the
Railway had cut it up root and branch. A great trunk-line had
swallowed the playground, sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off
the corner of the house: which, thus curtailed of its proportions,
presented itself, in a green stage of stucco, profilewise towards
the road, like a forlorn flat-iron without a handle, standing on
end.
It seems as if our schools were doomed to be the sport of change.
We have faint recollections of a Preparatory Day-School, which we
have sought in vain, and which must have been pulled down to make a
new street, ages ago. We have dim impressions, scarcely amounting
to a belief, that it was over a dyer's shop. We know that you went
up steps to it; that you frequently grazed your knees in doing so;
that you generally got your leg over the scraper, in trying to
scrape the mud off a very unsteady little shoe. The mistress of
the Establishment holds no place in our memory; but, rampant on one
eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and narrow, is a puffy
pug-dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over
Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he had
of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of his
moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of his crisp
tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. From an
otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we
conclude that he was of French extraction, and his name FIDELE. He
belonged to some female, chiefly inhabiting a back-parlour, whose
life appears to us to have been consumed in sniffing, and in
wearing a brown beaver bonnet. For her, he would sit up and
balance cake upon his nose, and not eat it until twenty had been
counted. To the best of our belief we were once called in to
witness this performance; when, unable, even in his milder moments,
to endure our presence, he instantly made at us, cake and all.
Why a something in mourning, called 'Miss Frost,' should still
connect itself with our preparatory school, we are unable to say.
We retain no impression of the beauty of Miss Frost - if she were
beautiful; or of the mental fascinations of Miss Frost - if she
were accomplished; yet her name and her black dress hold an
enduring place in our remembrance. An equally impersonal boy,
whose name has long since shaped itself unalterably into 'Master
Mawls,' is not to be dislodged from our brain. Retaining no
vindictive feeling towards Mawls - no feeling whatever, indeed - we
infer that neither he nor we can have loved Miss Frost. Our first
impression of Death and Burial is associated with this formless
pair. We all three nestled awfully in a corner one wintry day,
when the wind was blowing shrill, with Miss Frost's pinafore over
our heads; and Miss Frost told us in a whisper about somebody being
'screwed down.' It is the only distinct recollection we preserve
of these impalpable creatures, except a suspicion that the manners
of Master Mawls were susceptible of much improvement. Generally
speaking, we may observe that whenever we see a child intently
occupied with its nose, to the exclusion of all other subjects of
interest, our mind reverts, in a flash, to Master Mawls.
But, the School that was Our School before the Railroad came and
overthrew it, was quite another sort of place. We were old enough
to be put into Virgil when we went there, and to get Prizes for a
variety of polishing on which the rust has long accumulated. It
was a School of some celebrity in its neighbourhood - nobody could
have said why - and we had the honour to attain and hold the
eminent position of first boy. The master was supposed among us to
know nothing, and one of the ushers was supposed to know
everything. We are still inclined to think the first-named
supposition perfectly correct.
We have a general idea that its subject had been in the leather
trade, and had bought us - meaning Our School - of another
proprietor who was immensely learned. Whether this belief had any
real foundation, we are not likely ever to know now. The only
branches of education with which he showed the least acquaintance,
were, ruling and corporally punishing. He was always ruling
ciphering-books with a bloated mahogany ruler, or smiting the palms
of offenders with the same diabolical instrument, or viciously
drawing a pair of pantaloons tight with one of his large hands, and
caning the wearer with the other. We have no doubt whatever that
this occupation was the principal solace of his existence.
A profound respect for money pervaded Our School, which was, of
course, derived from its Chief. We remember an idiotic goggle-eyed
boy, with a big head and half-crowns without end, who suddenly
appeared as a parlour-boarder, and was rumoured to have come by sea
from some mysterious part of the earth where his parents rolled in
gold. He was usually called 'Mr.' by the Chief, and was said to
feed in the parlour on steaks and gravy; likewise to drink currant
wine. And he openly stated that if rolls and coffee were ever
denied him at breakfast, he would write home to that unknown part
of the globe from which he had come, and cause himself to be
recalled to the regions of gold. He was put into no form or class,
but learnt alone, as little as he liked - and he liked very little
- and there was a belief among us that this was because he was too
wealthy to be 'taken down.' His special treatment, and our vague
association of him with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and
Coral Reefs occasioned the wildest legends to be circulated as his
history. A tragedy in blank verse was written on the subject - if
our memory does not deceive us, by the hand that now chronicles
these recollections - in which his father figured as a Pirate, and
was shot for a voluminous catalogue of atrocities: first imparting
to his wife the secret of the cave in which his wealth was stored,
and from which his only son's half-crowns now issued. Dumbledon
(the boy's name) was represented as 'yet unborn' when his brave
father met his fate; and the despair and grief of Mrs. Dumbledon at
that calamity was movingly shadowed forth as having weakened the
parlour-boarder's mind. This production was received with great
favour, and was twice performed with closed doors in the dining-
room. But, it got wind, and was seized as libellous, and brought
the unlucky poet into severe affliction. Some two years
afterwards, all of a sudden one day, Dumbledon vanished. It was
whispered that the Chief himself had taken him down to the Docks,
and re-shipped him for the Spanish Main; but nothing certain was
ever known about his disappearance. At this hour, we cannot
thoroughly disconnect him from California.
Our School was rather famous for mysterious pupils. There was
another - a heavy young man, with a large double-cased silver
watch, and a fat knife the handle of which was a perfect tool-box -
who unaccountably appeared one day at a special desk of his own,
erected close to that of the Chief, with whom he held familiar
converse. He lived in the parlour, and went out for his walks, and
never took the least notice of us - even of us, the first boy -
unless to give us a deprecatory kick, or grimly to take our hat off
and throw it away, when he encountered us out of doors, which
unpleasant ceremony he always performed as he passed - not even
condescending to stop for the purpose. Some of us believed that
the classical attainments of this phenomenon were terrific, but
that his penmanship and arithmetic were defective, and he had come
there to mend them; others, that he was going to set up a school,
and had paid the Chief 'twenty-five pound down,' for leave to see
Our School at work. The gloomier spirits even said that he was
going to buy us; against which contingency, conspiracies were set
on foot for a general defection and running away. However, he
never did that. After staying for a quarter, during which period,
though closely observed, he was never seen to do anything but make
pens out of quills, write small hand in a secret portfolio, and
punch the point of the sharpest blade in his knife into his desk
all over it, he too disappeared, and his place knew him no more.
There was another boy, a fair, meek boy, with a delicate complexion
and rich curling hair, who, we found out, or thought we found out
(we have no idea now, and probably had none then, on what grounds,
but it was confidentially revealed from mouth to mouth), was the
son of a Viscount who had deserted his lovely mother. It was
understood that if he had his rights, he would be worth twenty
thousand a year. And that if his mother ever met his father, she
would shoot him with a silver pistol, which she carried, always
loaded to the muzzle, for that purpose. He was a very suggestive
topic. So was a young Mulatto, who was always believed (though
very amiable) to have a dagger about him somewhere. But, we think
they were both outshone, upon the whole, by another boy who claimed
to have been born on the twenty-ninth of February, and to have only
one birthday in five years. We suspect this to have been a fiction
- but he lived upon it all the time he was at Our School.
The principal currency of Our School was slate pencil. It had some
inexplicable value, that was never ascertained, never reduced to a
standard. To have a great hoard of it was somehow to be rich. We
used to bestow it in charity, and confer it as a precious boon upon
our chosen friends. When the holidays were coming, contributions
were solicited for certain boys whose relatives were in India, and
who were appealed for under the generic name of 'Holiday-stoppers,'
- appropriate marks of remembrance that should enliven and cheer
them in their homeless state. Personally, we always contributed
these tokens of sympathy in the form of slate pencil, and always
felt that it would be a comfort and a treasure to them.
Our School was remarkable for white mice. Red-polls, linnets, and
even canaries, were kept in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other
strange refuges for birds; but white mice were the favourite stock.
The boys trained the mice, much better than the masters trained the
boys. We recall one white mouse, who lived in the cover of a Latin
dictionary, who ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered
muskets, turned wheels, and even made a very creditable appearance
on the stage as the Dog of Montargis. He might have achieved
greater things, but for having the misfortune to mistake his way in
a triumphal procession to the Capitol, when he fell into a deep
inkstand, and was dyed black and drowned. The mice were the
occasion of some most ingenious engineering, in the construction of
their houses and instruments of performance. The famous one
belonged to a company of proprietors, some of whom have since made
Railroads, Engines, and Telegraphs; the chairman has erected mills
and bridges in New Zealand.
The usher at Our School, who was considered to know everything as
opposed to the Chief, who was considered to know nothing, was a
bony, gentle-faced, clerical-looking young man in rusty black. It
was whispered that he was sweet upon one of Maxby's sisters (Maxby
lived close by, and was a day pupil), and further that he 'favoured
Maxby.' As we remember, he taught Italian to Maxby's sisters on
half-holidays. He once went to the play with them, and wore a
white waistcoat and a rose: which was considered among us
equivalent to a declaration. We were of opinion on that occasion,
that to the last moment he expected Maxby's father to ask him to
dinner at five o'clock, and therefore neglected his own dinner at
half-past one, and finally got none. We exaggerated in our
imaginations the extent to which he punished Maxby's father's cold
meat at supper; and we agreed to believe that he was elevated with
wine and water when he came home. But, we all liked him; for he
had a good knowledge of boys, and would have made it a much better
school if he had had more power. He was writing master,
mathematical master, English master, made out the bills, mended the
pens, and did all sorts of things. He divided the little boys with
the Latin master (they were smuggled through their rudimentary
books, at odd times when there was nothing else to do), and he
always called at parents' houses to inquire after sick boys,
because he had gentlemanly manners. He was rather musical, and on
some remote quarter-day had bought an old trombone; but a bit of it
was lost, and it made the most extraordinary sounds when he
sometimes tried to play it of an evening. His holidays never began
(on account of the bills) until long after ours; but, in the summer
vacations he used to take pedestrian excursions with a knapsack;
and at Christmas time, he went to see his father at Chipping
Norton, who we all said (on no authority) was a dairy-fed pork-
butcher. Poor fellow! He was very low all day on Maxby's sister's
wedding-day, and afterwards was thought to favour Maxby more than
ever, though he had been expected to spite him. He has been dead
these twenty years. Poor fellow!
Our remembrance of Our School, presents the Latin master as a
colourless doubled-up near-sighted man with a crutch, who was
always cold, and always putting onions into his ears for deafness,
and always disclosing ends of flannel under all his garments, and
almost always applying a ball of pocket-handkerchief to some part
of his face with a screwing action round and round. He was a very
good scholar, and took great pains where he saw intelligence and a
desire to learn: otherwise, perhaps not. Our memory presents him
(unless teased into a passion) with as little energy as colour - as
having been worried and tormented into monotonous feebleness - as
having had the best part of his life ground out of him in a Mill of
boys. We remember with terror how he fell asleep one sultry
afternoon with the little smuggled class before him, and awoke not
when the footstep of the Chief fell heavy on the floor; how the
Chief aroused him, in the midst of a dread silence, and said, 'Mr.
Blinkins, are you ill, sir?' how he blushingly replied, 'Sir,
rather so;' how the Chief retorted with severity, 'Mr. Blinkins,
this is no place to be ill in' (which was very, very true), and
walked back solemn as the ghost in Hamlet, until, catching a
wandering eye, he called that boy for inattention, and happily
expressed his feelings towards the Latin master through the medium
of a substitute.
There was a fat little dancing-master who used to come in a gig,
and taught the more advanced among us hornpipes (as an
accomplishment in great social demand in after life); and there was
a brisk little French master who used to come in the sunniest
weather, with a handleless umbrella, and to whom the Chief was
always polite, because (as we believed), if the Chief offended him,
he would instantly address the Chief in French, and for ever
confound him before the boys with his inability to understand or
reply.
There was besides, a serving man, whose name was Phil. Our
retrospective glance presents Phil as a shipwrecked carpenter, cast
away upon the desert island of a school, and carrying into practice
an ingenious inkling of many trades. He mended whatever was
broken, and made whatever was wanted. He was general glazier,
among other things, and mended all the broken windows - at the
prime cost (as was darkly rumoured among us) of ninepence, for
every square charged three-and-six to parents. We had a high
opinion of his mechanical genius, and generally held that the Chief
'knew something bad of him,' and on pain of divulgence enforced
Phil to be his bondsman. We particularly remember that Phil had a
sovereign contempt for learning: which engenders in us a respect
for his sagacity, as it implies his accurate observation of the
relative positions of the Chief and the ushers. He was an
impenetrable man, who waited at table between whiles, and
throughout 'the half' kept the boxes in severe custody. He was
morose, even to the Chief, and never smiled, except at breaking-up,
when, in acknowledgment of the toast, 'Success to Phil! Hooray!'
he would slowly carve a grin out of his wooden face, where it would
remain until we were all gone. Nevertheless, one time when we had
the scarlet fever in the school, Phil nursed all the sick boys of
his own accord, and was like a mother to them.
There was another school not far off, and of course Our School
could have nothing to say to that school. It is mostly the way
with schools, whether of boys or men. Well! the railway has
swallowed up ours, and the locomotives now run smoothly over its
ashes.
So fades and languishes, grows dim and dies,
All that this world is proud of,
- and is not proud of, too. It had little reason to be proud of
Our School, and has done much better since in that way, and will do
far better yet.
-THE END-
Charles Dickens' short story: Our School
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