Chapter: I will give no more of the details of my hero's earlier years.  Enough
that he struggled through them, and at twelve years old knew every page
of his Latin and Greek Grammars by heart.  He had read the greater part
of Virgil, Horace and Livy, and I do not know how many Greek plays: he
was proficient in arithmetic, knew the first four books of Euclid
thoroughly, and had a fair knowledge of French.  It was now time he went
to school, and to school he was accordingly to go, under the famous Dr
Skinner of Roughborough.

Theobald had known Dr Skinner slightly at Cambridge.  He had been a
burning and a shining light in every position he had filled from his
boyhood upwards.  He was a very great genius.  Everyone knew this; they
said, indeed, that he was one of the few people to whom the word genius
could be applied without exaggeration.  Had he not taken I don't know how
many University Scholarships in his freshman's year?  Had he not been
afterwards Senior Wrangler, First Chancellor's Medallist and I do not
know how many more things besides?  And then, he was such a wonderful
speaker; at the Union Debating Club he had been without a rival, and had,
of course, been president; his moral character,--a point on which so many
geniuses were weak--was absolutely irreproachable; foremost of all,
however, among his many great qualities, and perhaps more remarkable even
than his genius was what biographers have called "the simple-minded and
child-like earnestness of his character," an earnestness which might be
perceived by the solemnity with which he spoke even about trifles.  It is
hardly necessary to say he was on the Liberal side in politics.

His personal appearance was not particularly prepossessing.  He was about
the middle height, portly, and had a couple of fierce grey eyes, that
flashed fire from beneath a pair of great bushy beetling eyebrows and
overawed all who came near him.  It was in respect of his personal
appearance, however, that, if he was vulnerable at all, his weak place
was to be found.  His hair when he was a young man was red, but after he
had taken his degree he had a brain fever which caused him to have his
head shaved; when he reappeared, he did so wearing a wig, and one which
was a good deal further off red than his own hair had been.  He not only
had never discarded his wig, but year by year it had edged itself a
little more and a little more off red, till by the time he was forty,
there was not a trace of red remaining, and his wig was brown.

When Dr Skinner was a very young man, hardly more than five-and-twenty,
the head-mastership of Roughborough Grammar School had fallen vacant, and
he had been unhesitatingly appointed.  The result justified the
selection.  Dr Skinner's pupils distinguished themselves at whichever
University they went to.  He moulded their minds after the model of his
own, and stamped an impression upon them which was indelible in after-
life; whatever else a Roughborough man might be, he was sure to make
everyone feel that he was a God-fearing earnest Christian and a Liberal,
if not a Radical, in politics.  Some boys, of course, were incapable of
appreciating the beauty and loftiness of Dr Skinner's nature.  Some such
boys, alas! there will be in every school; upon them Dr Skinner's hand
was very properly a heavy one.  His hand was against them, and theirs
against him during the whole time of the connection between them.  They
not only disliked him, but they hated all that he more especially
embodied, and throughout their lives disliked all that reminded them of
him.  Such boys, however, were in a minority, the spirit of the place
being decidedly Skinnerian.

I once had the honour of playing a game of chess with this great man.  It
was during the Christmas holidays, and I had come down to Roughborough
for a few days to see Alethea Pontifex (who was then living there) on
business.  It was very gracious of him to take notice of me, for if I was
a light of literature at all it was of the very lightest kind.

It is true that in the intervals of business I had written a good deal,
but my works had been almost exclusively for the stage, and for those
theatres that devoted themselves to extravaganza and burlesque.  I had
written many pieces of this description, full of puns and comic songs,
and they had had a fair success, but my best piece had been a treatment
of English history during the Reformation period, in the course of which
I had introduced Cranmer, Sir Thomas More, Henry the Eighth, Catherine of
Arragon, and Thomas Cromwell (in his youth better known as the _Malleus
Monachorum_), and had made them dance a break-down.  I had also
dramatised "The Pilgrim's Progress" for a Christmas Pantomime, and made
an important scene of Vanity Fair, with Mr Greatheart, Apollyon,
Christiana, Mercy, and Hopeful as the principal characters.  The
orchestra played music taken from Handel's best known works, but the time
was a good deal altered, and altogether the tunes were not exactly as
Handel left them.  Mr Greatheart was very stout and he had a red nose; he
wore a capacious waistcoat, and a shirt with a huge frill down the middle
of the front.  Hopeful was up to as much mischief as I could give him; he
wore the costume of a young swell of the period, and had a cigar in his
mouth which was continually going out.

Christiana did not wear much of anything: indeed it was said that the
dress which the Stage Manager had originally proposed for her had been
considered inadequate even by the Lord Chamberlain, but this is not the
case.  With all these delinquencies upon my mind it was natural that I
should feel convinced of sin while playing chess (which I hate) with the
great Dr Skinner of Roughborough--the historian of Athens and editor of
Demosthenes.  Dr Skinner, moreover, was one of those who pride themselves
on being able to set people at their ease at once, and I had been sitting
on the edge of my chair all the evening.  But I have always been very
easily overawed by a schoolmaster.

The game had been a long one, and at half-past nine, when supper came in,
we had each of us a few pieces remaining.  "What will you take for
supper, Dr Skinner?" said Mrs Skinner in a silvery voice.

He made no answer for some time, but at last in a tone of almost
superhuman solemnity, he said, first, "Nothing," and then "Nothing
whatever."

By and by, however, I had a sense come over me as though I were nearer
the consummation of all things than I had ever yet been.  The room seemed
to grow dark, as an expression came over Dr Skinner's face, which showed
that he was about to speak.  The expression gathered force, the room grew
darker and darker.  "Stay," he at length added, and I felt that here at
any rate was an end to a suspense which was rapidly becoming unbearable.
"Stay--I may presently take a glass of cold water--and a small piece of
bread and butter."

As he said the word "butter" his voice sank to a hardly audible whisper;
then there was a sigh as though of relief when the sentence was
concluded, and the universe this time was safe.

Another ten minutes of solemn silence finished the game.  The Doctor rose
briskly from his seat and placed himself at the supper table.  "Mrs
Skinner," he exclaimed jauntily, "what are those mysterious-looking
objects surrounded by potatoes?"

"Those are oysters, Dr Skinner."

"Give me some, and give Overton some."

And so on till he had eaten a good plate of oysters, a scallop shell of
minced veal nicely browned, some apple tart, and a hunk of bread and
cheese.  This was the small piece of bread and butter.

The cloth was now removed and tumblers with teaspoons in them, a lemon or
two and a jug of boiling water were placed upon the table.  Then the
great man unbent.  His face beamed.

"And what shall it be to drink?" he exclaimed persuasively.  "Shall it be
brandy and water?  No.  It shall be gin and water.  Gin is the more
wholesome liquor."

So gin it was, hot and stiff too.

Who can wonder at him or do anything but pity him?  Was he not
head-master of Roughborough School?  To whom had he owed money at any
time?  Whose ox had he taken, whose ass had he taken, or whom had he
defrauded?  What whisper had ever been breathed against his moral
character?  If he had become rich it was by the most honourable of all
means--his literary attainments; over and above his great works of
scholarship, his "Meditations upon the Epistle and Character of St Jude"
had placed him among the most popular of English theologians; it was so
exhaustive that no one who bought it need ever meditate upon the subject
again--indeed it exhausted all who had anything to do with it.  He had
made 5000 pounds by this work alone, and would very likely make another
5000 pounds before he died.  A man who had done all this and wanted a
piece of bread and butter had a right to announce the fact with some pomp
and circumstance.  Nor should his words be taken without searching for
what he used to call a "deeper and more hidden meaning."  Those who
searched for this even in his lightest utterances would not be without
their reward.  They would find that "bread and butter" was Skinnerese for
oyster-patties and apple tart, and "gin hot" the true translation of
water.

But independently of their money value, his works had made him a lasting
name in literature.  So probably Gallio was under the impression that his
fame would rest upon the treatises on natural history which we gather
from Seneca that he compiled, and which for aught we know may have
contained a complete theory of evolution; but the treatises are all gone
and Gallio has become immortal for the very last reason in the world that
he expected, and for the very last reason that would have flattered his
vanity.  He has become immortal because he cared nothing about the most
important movement with which he was ever brought into connection (I wish
people who are in search of immortality would lay the lesson to heart and
not make so much noise about important movements), and so, if Dr Skinner
becomes immortal, it will probably be for some reason very different from
the one which he so fondly imagined.

Could it be expected to enter into the head of such a man as this that in
reality he was making his money by corrupting youth; that it was his paid
profession to make the worse appear the better reason in the eyes of
those who were too young and inexperienced to be able to find him out;
that he kept out of the sight of those whom he professed to teach
material points of the argument, for the production of which they had a
right to rely upon the honour of anyone who made professions of
sincerity; that he was a passionate half-turkey-cock half-gander of a man
whose sallow, bilious face and hobble-gobble voice could scare the timid,
but who would take to his heels readily enough if he were met firmly;
that his "Meditations on St Jude," such as they were, were cribbed
without acknowledgment, and would have been beneath contempt if so many
people did not believe them to have been written honestly?  Mrs Skinner
might have perhaps kept him a little more in his proper place if she had
thought it worth while to try, but she had enough to attend to in looking
after her household and seeing that the boys were well fed and, if they
were ill, properly looked after--which she took good care they were.





Ernest had heard awful accounts of Dr Skinner's temper, and of the
bullying which the younger boys at Roughborough had to put up with at the
hands of the bigger ones.  He had now got about as much as he could
stand, and felt as though it must go hard with him if his burdens of
whatever kind were to be increased.  He did not cry on leaving home, but
I am afraid he did on being told that he was getting near Roughborough.
His father and mother were with him, having posted from home in their own
carriage; Roughborough had as yet no railway, and as it was only some
forty miles from Battersby, this was the easiest way of getting there.

On seeing him cry, his mother felt flattered and caressed him.  She said
she knew he must feel very sad at leaving such a happy home, and going
among people who, though they would be very good to him, could never,
never be as good as his dear papa and she had been; still, she was
herself, if he only knew it, much more deserving of pity than he was, for
the parting was more painful to her than it could possibly be to him,
etc., and Ernest, on being told that his tears were for grief at leaving
home, took it all on trust, and did not trouble to investigate the real
cause of his tears.  As they approached Roughborough he pulled himself
together, and was fairly calm by the time he reached Dr Skinner's.

On their arrival they had luncheon with the Doctor and his wife, and then
Mrs Skinner took Christina over the bedrooms, and showed her where her
dear little boy was to sleep.

Whatever men may think about the study of man, women do really believe
the noblest study for womankind to be woman, and Christina was too much
engrossed with Mrs Skinner to pay much attention to anything else; I
daresay Mrs Skinner, too, was taking pretty accurate stock of Christina.
Christina was charmed, as indeed she generally was with any new
acquaintance, for she found in them (and so must we all) something of the
nature of a cross; as for Mrs Skinner, I imagine she had seen too many
Christinas to find much regeneration in the sample now before her; I
believe her private opinion echoed the dictum of a well-known head-master
who declared that all parents were fools, but more especially mothers;
she was, however, all smiles and sweetness, and Christina devoured these
graciously as tributes paid more particularly to herself, and such as no
other mother would have been at all likely to have won.

In the meantime Theobald and Ernest were with Dr Skinner in his
library--the room where new boys were examined and old ones had up for
rebuke or chastisement.  If the walls of that room could speak, what an
amount of blundering and capricious cruelty would they not bear witness
to!

Like all houses, Dr Skinner's had its peculiar smell.  In this case the
prevailing odour was one of Russia leather, but along with it there was a
subordinate savour as of a chemist's shop.  This came from a small
laboratory in one corner of the room--the possession of which, together
with the free chattery and smattery use of such words as "carbonate,"
"hyposulphite," "phosphate," and "affinity," were enough to convince even
the most sceptical that Dr Skinner had a profound knowledge of chemistry.

I may say in passing that Dr Skinner had dabbled in a great many other
things as well as chemistry.  He was a man of many small knowledges, and
each of them dangerous.  I remember Alethea Pontifex once said in her
wicked way to me, that Dr Skinner put her in mind of the Bourbon princes
on their return from exile after the battle of Waterloo, only that he was
their exact converse; for whereas they had learned nothing and forgotten
nothing, Dr Skinner had learned everything and forgotten everything.  And
this puts me in mind of another of her wicked sayings about Dr Skinner.
She told me one day that he had the harmlessness of the serpent and the
wisdom of the dove.

But to return to Dr Skinner's library; over the chimney-piece there was a
Bishop's half length portrait of Dr Skinner himself, painted by the elder
Pickersgill, whose merit Dr Skinner had been among the first to discern
and foster.  There were no other pictures in the library, but in the
dining-room there was a fine collection, which the doctor had got
together with his usual consummate taste.  He added to it largely in
later life, and when it came to the hammer at Christie's, as it did not
long since, it was found to comprise many of the latest and most matured
works of Solomon Hart, O'Neil, Charles Landseer, and more of our recent
Academicians than I can at the moment remember.  There were thus brought
together and exhibited at one view many works which had attracted
attention at the Academy Exhibitions, and as to whose ultimate destiny
there had been some curiosity.  The prices realised were disappointing to
the executors, but, then, these things are so much a matter of chance.  An
unscrupulous writer in a well-known weekly paper had written the
collection down.  Moreover there had been one or two large sales a short
time before Dr Skinner's, so that at this last there was rather a panic,
and a reaction against the high prices that had ruled lately.

The table of the library was loaded with books many deep; MSS. of all
kinds were confusedly mixed up with them,--boys' exercises, probably, and
examination papers--but all littering untidily about.  The room in fact
was as depressing from its slatternliness as from its atmosphere of
erudition.  Theobald and Ernest as they entered it, stumbled over a large
hole in the Turkey carpet, and the dust that rose showed how long it was
since it had been taken up and beaten.  This, I should say, was no fault
of Mrs Skinner's but was due to the Doctor himself, who declared that if
his papers were once disturbed it would be the death of him.  Near the
window was a green cage containing a pair of turtle doves, whose
plaintive cooing added to the melancholy of the place.  The walls were
covered with book shelves from floor to ceiling, and on every shelf the
books stood in double rows.  It was horrible.  Prominent among the most
prominent upon the most prominent shelf were a series of splendidly bound
volumes entitled "Skinner's Works."

Boys are sadly apt to rush to conclusions, and Ernest believed that Dr
Skinner knew all the books in this terrible library, and that he, if he
were to be any good, should have to learn them too.  His heart fainted
within him.

He was told to sit on a chair against the wall and did so, while Dr
Skinner talked to Theobald upon the topics of the day.  He talked about
the Hampden Controversy then raging, and discoursed learnedly about
"Praemunire"; then he talked about the revolution which had just broken
out in Sicily, and rejoiced that the Pope had refused to allow foreign
troops to pass through his dominions in order to crush it.  Dr Skinner
and the other masters took in the Times among them, and Dr Skinner echoed
the _Times_' leaders.  In those days there were no penny papers and
Theobald only took in the _Spectator_--for he was at that time on the
Whig side in politics; besides this he used to receive the
_Ecclesiastical Gazette_ once a month, but he saw no other papers, and
was amazed at the ease and fluency with which Dr Skinner ran from subject
to subject.

The Pope's action in the matter of the Sicilian revolution naturally led
the Doctor to the reforms which his Holiness had introduced into his
dominions, and he laughed consumedly over the joke which had not long
since appeared in _Punch_, to the effect that Pio "No, No," should rather
have been named Pio "Yes, Yes," because, as the doctor explained, he
granted everything his subjects asked for.  Anything like a pun went
straight to Dr Skinner's heart.

Then he went on to the matter of these reforms themselves.  They opened
up a new era in the history of Christendom, and would have such momentous
and far-reaching consequences, that they might even lead to a
reconciliation between the Churches of England and Rome.  Dr Skinner had
lately published a pamphlet upon this subject, which had shown great
learning, and had attacked the Church of Rome in a way which did not
promise much hope of reconciliation.  He had grounded his attack upon the
letters A.M.D.G., which he had seen outside a Roman Catholic chapel, and
which of course stood for _Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem_.  Could anything be
more idolatrous?

I am told, by the way, that I must have let my memory play me one of the
tricks it often does play me, when I said the Doctor proposed _Ad Mariam
Dei Genetricem_ as the full harmonies, so to speak, which should be
constructed upon the bass A.M.D.G., for that this is bad Latin, and that
the doctor really harmonised the letters thus: _Ave Maria Dei Genetrix_.
No doubt the doctor did what was right in the matter of Latinity--I have
forgotten the little Latin I ever knew, and am not going to look the
matter up, but I believe the doctor said _Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem_, and
if so we may be sure that _Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem_, is good enough
Latin at any rate for ecclesiastical purposes.

The reply of the local priest had not yet appeared, and Dr Skinner was
jubilant, but when the answer appeared, and it was solemnly declared that
A.M.D.G. stood for nothing more dangerous than _Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam_,
it was felt that though this subterfuge would not succeed with any
intelligent Englishman, still it was a pity Dr Skinner had selected this
particular point for his attack, for he had to leave his enemy in
possession of the field.  When people are left in possession of the
field, spectators have an awkward habit of thinking that their adversary
does not dare to come to the scratch.

Dr Skinner was telling Theobald all about his pamphlet, and I doubt
whether this gentleman was much more comfortable than Ernest himself.  He
was bored, for in his heart he hated Liberalism, though he was ashamed to
say so, and, as I have said, professed to be on the Whig side.  He did
not want to be reconciled to the Church of Rome; he wanted to make all
Roman Catholics turn Protestants, and could never understand why they
would not do so; but the Doctor talked in such a truly liberal spirit,
and shut him up so sharply when he tried to edge in a word or two, that
he had to let him have it all his own way, and this was not what he was
accustomed to.  He was wondering how he could bring it to an end, when a
diversion was created by the discovery that Ernest had begun to
cry--doubtless through an intense but inarticulate sense of a boredom
greater than he could bear.  He was evidently in a highly nervous state,
and a good deal upset by the excitement of the morning, Mrs Skinner
therefore, who came in with Christina at this juncture, proposed that he
should spend the afternoon with Mrs Jay, the matron, and not be
introduced to his young companions until the following morning.  His
father and mother now bade him an affectionate farewell, and the lad was
handed over to Mrs Jay.

O schoolmasters--if any of you read this book--bear in mind when any
particularly timid drivelling urchin is brought by his papa into your
study, and you treat him with the contempt which he deserves, and
afterwards make his life a burden to him for years--bear in mind that it
is exactly in the disguise of such a boy as this that your future
chronicler will appear.  Never see a wretched little heavy-eyed mite
sitting on the edge of a chair against your study wall without saying to
yourselves, "perhaps this boy is he who, if I am not careful, will one
day tell the world what manner of man I was."  If even two or three
schoolmasters learn this lesson and remember it, the preceding chapters
will not have been written in vain.





Soon after his father and mother had left him Ernest dropped asleep over
a book which Mrs Jay had given him, and he did not awake till dusk.  Then
he sat down on a stool in front of the fire, which showed pleasantly in
the late January twilight, and began to muse.  He felt weak, feeble, ill
at ease and unable to see his way out of the innumerable troubles that
were before him.  Perhaps, he said to himself, he might even die, but
this, far from being an end of his troubles, would prove the beginning of
new ones; for at the best he would only go to Grandpapa Pontifex and
Grandmamma Allaby, and though they would perhaps be more easy to get on
with than Papa and Mamma, yet they were undoubtedly not so really good,
and were more worldly; moreover they were grown-up people--especially
Grandpapa Pontifex, who so far as he could understand had been very much
grown-up, and he did not know why, but there was always something that
kept him from loving any grown-up people very much--except one or two of
the servants, who had indeed been as nice as anything that he could
imagine.  Besides even if he were to die and go to Heaven he supposed he
should have to complete his education somewhere.

In the meantime his father and mother were rolling along the muddy roads,
each in his or her own corner of the carriage, and each revolving many
things which were and were not to come to pass.  Times have changed since
I last showed them to the reader as sitting together silently in a
carriage, but except as regards their mutual relations, they have altered
singularly little.  When I was younger I used to think the Prayer Book
was wrong in requiring us to say the General Confession twice a week from
childhood to old age, without making provision for our not being quite
such great sinners at seventy as we had been at seven; granted that we
should go to the wash like table-cloths at least once a week, still I
used to think a day ought to come when we should want rather less rubbing
and scrubbing at.  Now that I have grown older myself I have seen that
the Church has estimated probabilities better than I had done.

The pair said not a word to one another, but watched the fading light and
naked trees, the brown fields with here and there a melancholy cottage by
the road side, and the rain that fell fast upon the carriage windows.  It
was a kind of afternoon on which nice people for the most part like to be
snug at home, and Theobald was a little snappish at reflecting how many
miles he had to post before he could be at his own fireside again.
However there was nothing for it, so the pair sat quietly and watched the
roadside objects flit by them, and get greyer and grimmer as the light
faded.

Though they spoke not to one another, there was one nearer to each of
them with whom they could converse freely.  "I hope," said Theobald to
himself, "I hope he'll work--or else that Skinner will make him.  I don't
like Skinner, I never did like him, but he is unquestionably a man of
genius, and no one turns out so many pupils who succeed at Oxford and
Cambridge, and that is the best test.  I have done my share towards
starting him well.  Skinner said he had been well grounded and was very
forward.  I suppose he will presume upon it now and do nothing, for his
nature is an idle one.  He is not fond of me, I'm sure he is not.  He
ought to be after all the trouble I have taken with him, but he is
ungrateful and selfish.  It is an unnatural thing for a boy not to be
fond of his own father.  If he was fond of me I should be fond of him,
but I cannot like a son who, I am sure, dislikes me.  He shrinks out of
my way whenever he sees me coming near him.  He will not stay five
minutes in the same room with me if he can help it.  He is deceitful.  He
would not want to hide himself away so much if he were not deceitful.
That is a bad sign and one which makes me fear he will grow up
extravagant.  I am sure he will grow up extravagant.  I should have given
him more pocket-money if I had not known this--but what is the good of
giving him pocket-money?  It is all gone directly.  If he doesn't buy
something with it he gives it away to the first little boy or girl he
sees who takes his fancy.  He forgets that it's my money he is giving
away.  I give him money that he may have money and learn to know its
uses, not that he may go and squander it immediately.  I wish he was not
so fond of music, it will interfere with his Latin and Greek.  I will
stop it as much as I can.  Why, when he was translating Livy the other
day he slipped out Handel's name in mistake for Hannibal's, and his
mother tells me he knows half the tunes in the 'Messiah' by heart.  What
should a boy of his age know about the 'Messiah'?  If I had shown half as
many dangerous tendencies when I was a boy, my father would have
apprenticed me to a greengrocer, of that I'm very sure," etc., etc.

Then his thoughts turned to Egypt and the tenth plague.  It seemed to him
that if the little Egyptians had been anything like Ernest, the plague
must have been something very like a blessing in disguise.  If the
Israelites were to come to England now he should be greatly tempted not
to let them go.

Mrs Theobald's thoughts ran in a different current.  "Lord Lonsford's
grandson--it's a pity his name is Figgins; however, blood is blood as
much through the female line as the male, indeed, perhaps even more so if
the truth were known.  I wonder who Mr Figgins was.  I think Mrs Skinner
said he was dead, however, I must find out all about him.  It would be
delightful if young Figgins were to ask Ernest home for the holidays.  Who
knows but he might meet Lord Lonsford himself, or at any rate some of
Lord Lonsford's other descendants?"

Meanwhile the boy himself was still sitting moodily before the fire in
Mrs Jay's room.  "Papa and Mamma," he was saying to himself, "are much
better and cleverer than anyone else, but, I, alas! shall never be either
good or clever."

Mrs Pontifex continued--

"Perhaps it would be best to get young Figgins on a visit to ourselves
first.  That would be charming.  Theobald would not like it, for he does
not like children; I must see how I can manage it, for it would be so
nice to have young Figgins--or stay!  Ernest shall go and stay with
Figgins and meet the future Lord Lonsford, who I should think must be
about Ernest's age, and then if he and Ernest were to become friends
Ernest might ask him to Battersby, and he might fall in love with
Charlotte.  I think we have done _most wisely_ in sending Ernest to Dr
Skinner's.  Dr Skinner's piety is no less remarkable than his genius.  One
can tell these things at a glance, and he must have felt it about me no
less strongly than I about him.  I think he seemed much struck with
Theobald and myself--indeed, Theobald's intellectual power must impress
any one, and I was showing, I do believe, to my best advantage.  When I
smiled at him and said I left my boy in his hands with the most entire
confidence that he would be as well cared for as if he were at my own
house, I am sure he was greatly pleased.  I should not think many of the
mothers who bring him boys can impress him so favourably, or say such
nice things to him as I did.  My smile is sweet when I desire to make it
so.  I never was perhaps exactly pretty, but I was always admitted to be
fascinating.  Dr Skinner is a very handsome man--too good on the whole I
should say for Mrs Skinner.  Theobald says he is not handsome, but men
are no judges, and he has such a pleasant bright face.  I think my bonnet
became me.  As soon as I get home I will tell Chambers to trim my blue
and yellow merino with--" etc., etc.

All this time the letter which has been given above was lying in
Christina's private little Japanese cabinet, read and re-read and
approved of many times over, not to say, if the truth were known,
rewritten more than once, though dated as in the first instance--and
this, too, though Christina was fond enough of a joke in a small way.

Ernest, still in Mrs Jay's room mused onward.  "Grown-up people," he said
to himself, "when they were ladies and gentlemen, never did naughty
things, but he was always doing them.  He had heard that some grown-up
people were worldly, which of course was wrong, still this was quite
distinct from being naughty, and did not get them punished or scolded.
His own Papa and Mamma were not even worldly; they had often explained to
him that they were exceptionally unworldly; he well knew that they had
never done anything naughty since they had been children, and that even
as children they had been nearly faultless.  Oh! how different from
himself!  When should he learn to love his Papa and Mamma as they had
loved theirs?  How could he hope ever to grow up to be as good and wise
as they, or even tolerably good and wise?  Alas! never.  It could not be.
He did not love his Papa and Mamma, in spite of all their goodness both
in themselves and to him.  He hated Papa, and did not like Mamma, and
this was what none but a bad and ungrateful boy would do after all that
had been done for him.  Besides he did not like Sunday; he did not like
anything that was really good; his tastes were low and such as he was
ashamed of.  He liked people best if they sometimes swore a little, so
long as it was not at him.  As for his Catechism and Bible readings he
had no heart in them.  He had never attended to a sermon in his life.
Even when he had been taken to hear Mr Vaughan at Brighton, who, as
everyone knew, preached such beautiful sermons for children, he had been
very glad when it was all over, nor did he believe he could get through
church at all if it was not for the voluntary upon the organ and the
hymns and chanting.  The Catechism was awful.  He had never been able to
understand what it was that he desired of his Lord God and Heavenly
Father, nor had he yet got hold of a single idea in connection with the
word Sacrament.  His duty towards his neighbour was another bugbear.  It
seemed to him that he had duties towards everybody, lying in wait for him
upon every side, but that nobody had any duties towards him.  Then there
was that awful and mysterious word 'business.'  What did it all mean?
What was 'business'?  His Papa was a wonderfully good man of business,
his Mamma had often told him so--but he should never be one.  It was
hopeless, and very awful, for people were continually telling him that he
would have to earn his own living.  No doubt, but how--considering how
stupid, idle, ignorant, self-indulgent, and physically puny he was?  All
grown-up people were clever, except servants--and even these were
cleverer than ever he should be.  Oh, why, why, why, could not people be
born into the world as grown-up persons?  Then he thought of Casabianca.
He had been examined in that poem by his father not long before.  'When
only would he leave his position?  To whom did he call?  Did he get an
answer?  Why?  How many times did he call upon his father?  What happened
to him?  What was the noblest life that perished there?  Do you think so?
Why do you think so?'  And all the rest of it.  Of course he thought
Casabianca's was the noblest life that perished there; there could be no
two opinions about that; it never occurred to him that the moral of the
poem was that young people cannot begin too soon to exercise discretion
in the obedience they pay to their Papa and Mamma.  Oh, no! the only
thought in his mind was that he should never, never have been like
Casabianca, and that Casabianca would have despised him so much, if he
could have known him, that he would not have condescended to speak to
him.  There was nobody else in the ship worth reckoning at all: it did
not matter how much they were blown up.  Mrs Hemans knew them all and
they were a very indifferent lot.  Besides Casabianca was so good-looking
and came of such a good family."

And thus his small mind kept wandering on till he could follow it no
longer, and again went off into a doze.





Next morning Theobald and Christina arose feeling a little tired from
their journey, but happy in that best of all happiness, the approbation
of their consciences.  It would be their boy's fault henceforth if he
were not good, and as prosperous as it was at all desirable that he
should be.  What more could parents do than they had done?  The answer
"Nothing" will rise as readily to the lips of the reader as to those of
Theobald and Christina themselves.

A few days later the parents were gratified at receiving the following
letter from their son--

   "My Dear Mamma,--I am very well.  Dr Skinner made me do about the
   horse free and exulting roaming in the wide fields in Latin verse, but
   as I had done it with Papa I knew how to do it, and it was nearly all
   right, and he put me in the fourth form under Mr Templer, and I have
   to begin a new Latin grammar not like the old, but much harder.  I
   know you wish me to work, and I will try very hard.  With best love to
   Joey and Charlotte, and to Papa, I remain, your affectionate son,
   ERNEST."

Nothing could be nicer or more proper.  It really did seem as though he
were inclined to turn over a new leaf.  The boys had all come back, the
examinations were over, and the routine of the half year began; Ernest
found that his fears about being kicked about and bullied were
exaggerated.  Nobody did anything very dreadful to him.  He had to run
errands between certain hours for the elder boys, and to take his turn at
greasing the footballs, and so forth, but there was an excellent spirit
in the school as regards bullying.

Nevertheless, he was far from happy.  Dr Skinner was much too like his
father.  True, Ernest was not thrown in with him much yet, but he was
always there; there was no knowing at what moment he might not put in an
appearance, and whenever he did show, it was to storm about something.  He
was like the lion in the Bishop of Oxford's Sunday story--always liable
to rush out from behind some bush and devour some one when he was least
expected.  He called Ernest "an audacious reptile" and said he wondered
the earth did not open and swallow him up because he pronounced Thalia
with a short i.  "And this to me," he thundered, "who never made a false
quantity in my life."  Surely he would have been a much nicer person if
he had made false quantities in his youth like other people.  Ernest
could not imagine how the boys in Dr Skinner's form continued to live;
but yet they did, and even throve, and, strange as it may seem, idolised
him, or professed to do so in after life.  To Ernest it seemed like
living on the crater of Vesuvius.

He was himself, as has been said, in Mr Templer's form, who was snappish,
but not downright wicked, and was very easy to crib under.  Ernest used
to wonder how Mr Templer could be so blind, for he supposed Mr Templer
must have cribbed when he was at school, and would ask himself whether he
should forget his youth when he got old, as Mr Templer had forgotten his.
He used to think he never could possibly forget any part of it.

Then there was Mrs Jay, who was sometimes very alarming.  A few days
after the half year had commenced, there being some little extra noise in
the hall, she rushed in with her spectacles on her forehead and her cap
strings flying, and called the boy whom Ernest had selected as his hero
the "rampingest-scampingest-rackety-tackety-tow-row-roaringest boy in the
whole school."  But she used to say things that Ernest liked.  If the
Doctor went out to dinner, and there were no prayers, she would come in
and say, "Young gentlemen, prayers are excused this evening"; and, take
her for all in all, she was a kindly old soul enough.

Most boys soon discover the difference between noise and actual danger,
but to others it is so unnatural to menace, unless they mean mischief,
that they are long before they leave off taking turkey-cocks and ganders
_au serieux_.  Ernest was one of the latter sort, and found the
atmosphere of Roughborough so gusty that he was glad to shrink out of
sight and out of mind whenever he could.  He disliked the games worse
even than the squalls of the class-room and hall, for he was still
feeble, not filling out and attaining his full strength till a much later
age than most boys.  This was perhaps due to the closeness with which his
father had kept him to his books in childhood, but I think in part also
to a tendency towards lateness in attaining maturity, hereditary in the
Pontifex family, which was one also of unusual longevity.  At thirteen or
fourteen he was a mere bag of bones, with upper arms about as thick as
the wrists of other boys of his age; his little chest was
pigeon-breasted; he appeared to have no strength or stamina whatever, and
finding he always went to the wall in physical encounters, whether
undertaken in jest or earnest, even with boys shorter than himself, the
timidity natural to childhood increased upon him to an extent that I am
afraid amounted to cowardice.  This rendered him even less capable than
he might otherwise have been, for as confidence increases power, so want
of confidence increases impotence.  After he had had the breath knocked
out of him and been well shinned half a dozen times in scrimmages at
football--scrimmages in which he had become involved sorely against his
will--he ceased to see any further fun in football, and shirked that
noble game in a way that got him into trouble with the elder boys, who
would stand no shirking on the part of the younger ones.

He was as useless and ill at ease with cricket as with football, nor in
spite of all his efforts could he ever throw a ball or a stone.  It soon
became plain, therefore, to everyone that Pontifex was a young muff, a
mollycoddle, not to be tortured, but still not to be rated highly.  He
was not however, actively unpopular, for it was seen that he was quite
square _inter pares_, not at all vindictive, easily pleased, perfectly
free with whatever little money he had, no greater lover of his school
work than of the games, and generally more inclinable to moderate vice
than to immoderate virtue.

These qualities will prevent any boy from sinking very low in the opinion
of his schoolfellows; but Ernest thought he had fallen lower than he
probably had, and hated and despised himself for what he, as much as
anyone else, believed to be his cowardice.  He did not like the boys whom
he thought like himself.  His heroes were strong and vigorous, and the
less they inclined towards him the more he worshipped them.  All this
made him very unhappy, for it never occurred to him that the instinct
which made him keep out of games for which he was ill adapted, was more
reasonable than the reason which would have driven him into them.
Nevertheless he followed his instinct for the most part, rather than his
reason.  _Sapiens suam si sapientiam norit_.





With the masters Ernest was ere long in absolute disgrace.  He had more
liberty now than he had known heretofore.  The heavy hand and watchful
eye of Theobald were no longer about his path and about his bed and
spying out all his ways; and punishment by way of copying out lines of
Virgil was a very different thing from the savage beatings of his father.
The copying out in fact was often less trouble than the lesson.  Latin
and Greek had nothing in them which commended them to his instinct as
likely to bring him peace even at the last; still less did they hold out
any hope of doing so within some more reasonable time.  The deadness
inherent in these defunct languages themselves had never been
artificially counteracted by a system of _bona fide_ rewards for
application.  There had been any amount of punishments for want of
application, but no good comfortable bribes had baited the hook which was
to allure him to his good.

Indeed, the more pleasant side of learning to do this or that had always
been treated as something with which Ernest had no concern.  We had no
business with pleasant things at all, at any rate very little business,
at any rate not he, Ernest.  We were put into this world not for pleasure
but duty, and pleasure had in it something more or less sinful in its
very essence.  If we were doing anything we liked, we, or at any rate he,
Ernest, should apologise and think he was being very mercifully dealt
with, if not at once told to go and do something else.  With what he did
not like, however, it was different; the more he disliked a thing the
greater the presumption that it was right.  It never occurred to him that
the presumption was in favour of the rightness of what was most pleasant,
and that the onus of proving that it was not right lay with those who
disputed its being so.  I have said more than once that he believed in
his own depravity; never was there a little mortal more ready to accept
without cavil whatever he was told by those who were in authority over
him: he thought, at least, that he believed it, for as yet he knew
nothing of that other Ernest that dwelt within him, and was so much
stronger and more real than the Ernest of which he was conscious.  The
dumb Ernest persuaded with inarticulate feelings too swift and sure to be
translated into such debateable things as words, but practically insisted
as follows--

   "Growing is not the easy plain sailing business that it is commonly
   supposed to be: it is hard work--harder than any but a growing boy can
   understand; it requires attention, and you are not strong enough to
   attend to your bodily growth, and to your lessons too.  Besides, Latin
   and Greek are great humbug; the more people know of them the more
   odious they generally are; the nice people whom you delight in either
   never knew any at all or forgot what they had learned as soon as they
   could; they never turned to the classics after they were no longer
   forced to read them; therefore they are nonsense, all very well in
   their own time and country, but out of place here.  Never learn
   anything until you find you have been made uncomfortable for a good
   long while by not knowing it; when you find that you have occasion for
   this or that knowledge, or foresee that you will have occasion for it
   shortly, the sooner you learn it the better, but till then spend your
   time in growing bone and muscle; these will be much more useful to you
   than Latin and Greek, nor will you ever be able to make them if you do
   not do so now, whereas Latin and Greek can be acquired at any time by
   those who want them.

   "You are surrounded on every side by lies which would deceive even the
   elect, if the elect were not generally so uncommonly wide awake; the
   self of which you are conscious, your reasoning and reflecting self,
   will believe these lies and bid you act in accordance with them.  This
   conscious self of yours, Ernest, is a prig begotten of prigs and
   trained in priggishness; I will not allow it to shape your actions,
   though it will doubtless shape your words for many a year to come.
   Your papa is not here to beat you now; this is a change in the
   conditions of your existence, and should be followed by changed
   actions.  Obey me, your true self, and things will go tolerably well
   with you, but only listen to that outward and visible old husk of
   yours which is called your father, and I will rend you in pieces even
   unto the third and fourth generation as one who has hated God; for I,
   Ernest, am the God who made you."

How shocked Ernest would have been if he could have heard the advice he
was receiving; what consternation too there would have been at Battersby;
but the matter did not end here, for this same wicked inner self gave him
bad advice about his pocket money, the choice of his companions and on
the whole Ernest was attentive and obedient to its behests, more so than
Theobald had been.  The consequence was that he learned little, his mind
growing more slowly and his body rather faster than heretofore: and when
by and by his inner self urged him in directions where he met obstacles
beyond his strength to combat, he took--though with passionate
compunctions of conscience--the nearest course to the one from which he
was debarred which circumstances would allow.

It may be guessed that Ernest was not the chosen friend of the more
sedate and well-conducted youths then studying at Roughborough.  Some of
the less desirable boys used to go to public-houses and drink more beer
than was good for them; Ernest's inner self can hardly have told him to
ally himself to these young gentlemen, but he did so at an early age, and
was sometimes made pitiably sick by an amount of beer which would have
produced no effect upon a stronger boy.  Ernest's inner self must have
interposed at this point and told him that there was not much fun in
this, for he dropped the habit ere it had taken firm hold of him, and
never resumed it; but he contracted another at the disgracefully early
age of between thirteen and fourteen which he did not relinquish, though
to the present day his conscious self keeps dinging it into him that the
less he smokes the better.

And so matters went on till my hero was nearly fourteen years old.  If by
that time he was not actually a young blackguard, he belonged to a
debateable class between the sub-reputable and the upper disreputable,
with perhaps rather more leaning to the latter except so far as vices of
meanness were concerned, from which he was fairly free.  I gather this
partly from what Ernest has told me, and partly from his school bills
which I remember Theobald showed me with much complaining.  There was an
institution at Roughborough called the monthly merit money; the maximum
sum which a boy of Ernest's age could get was four shillings and
sixpence; several boys got four shillings and few less than sixpence, but
Ernest never got more than half-a-crown and seldom more than eighteen
pence; his average would, I should think, be about one and nine pence,
which was just too much for him to rank among the downright bad boys, but
too little to put him among the good ones.

 At the age of twelve, Ernest is enrolled in a grammar school at Roughborough, located about fifty miles from Battersby. Dr. Skinner, the headmaster, has a general reputation as a man of genius by virtue of his undergraduate debating record, his biblical scholarship, and his record of turning out boys who distinguish themselves as university students. Ernest, however, is one of a minority of pupils at Roughborough who do not fall under the spell of this man and his reputation as a "God-fearing earnest Christian and a Liberal, if not a Radical, in politics." Dr. Skinner is, in fact, a carbon copy of Ernest's father in his handling of boys. In his account of an evening of chess with Dr. Skinner, Overton reveals the petty, boorish, and pretentious qualities of the man. Although he dutifully writes to his parents as though he were happy at Roughborough, Ernest is unhappy during his first two years there. At least, however, he is free of his father's bullying, and Dr. Skinner only occasionally makes his menacing presence felt. Fortunately, Ernest's schoolmates are mostly free of the offensive behavior so often associated with English public schools of that period. Only Ernest's reluctance to participate in athletics incurs their displeasure, but Ernest's aversion to studying impresses them favorably. He drinks more beer than is good for a frail boy, and he takes up smoking. The monthly "merit money" he receives roughly indicates his social standing: "too much for him to rank among the downright bad boys, but too little to put him among the good ones.

