Chapter III: Part 3

‘Let it be supposed, grandmother, that you were born in one of the thousand London alleys; that you were nursed with milk and opiates by a mother able or willing to pay small attention to your wants. Your first recollection is of having ‘scalled head,’ a disgusting skin disease, begotten among dirt, with which poor ragged children are infested. Then you remember the death of a brother who was your baby playmate. He died of a fever. You remember other deaths, and how you pondered much in a child’s way, while playing with a pool of filth, upon this fever, what it was. You remember the pool in your undrained alley, when it was not quite so bad as it is now. You remember how you laboured three times a week, when water was turned on for two hours at the common tap, how you laboured for your mother to supply her want of it, and came with your bucket into competition with the tenants of the other houses, all eager to lay in a stock. You remember how you enjoyed a wash when you could get it; how you saw your mother strive to wash a tub full of linen in a pipkin full of water, and the precious juice then could not be thrown away until you had aided her attempt to scrub the floors with it. You remember how your father died of a fever, and you slept so near his corpse that when you were restless in the night once, you were awakened by your hand touching upon its cold face. You remember how your mother moaned by day, and how you heard her sob in the night season. So much, that now and then you went to kiss her. You remember when your elder sister drowned herself, nobody ever told you why;—you think you know why. How your mother went out, when she could, for a day’s work, but was too ragged and too dirty to find many patrons. How she took to gin-drinking, lost her old love for you, and her old memories. How you wished that you could find employment, but could find none for the ragged little wretch. How you begged some pence, and bought some oranges, and prayed to God that you might be honest in a trade however small. How you were taken by a policeman before a magistrate, who said that he must put you down. How you were sent to prison, and came out shaking your little fists against Society, who made you be the dirty thief you are.’

There! I can’t copy any more for rage. There’s a fellow, to address a woman of my years! But he’ll live to repent it, Sir, when I am dead and gone. My hand shakes so after copying this insolence, that I can’t hold my pen any more to-day; besides, it has got bad, and there is nobody now here to mend it. I should like my letter to be put first in your next number; let it have large print and a great many capitals.

A SAMPLE OF THE OLD SCHOOL.

BY AN OLD BOY.

All the particulars of the ensuing narration are strictly matters of fact, except the proper names of places and persons, as we used to say at Rood Priory, better known, in its time, as Roberts’s, better still as Old Bob’s; the Establishment for Young Gentlemen—much as Old Bob would have been enraged to hear it called so—which I am about to describe.

Rood Priory was so called from standing near the site of that monastery. Though really a private school, it was conducted after the manner of a public one. Situated in the same Cathedral Town with the College of St. Joseph, it maintained, indeed, a sort of rivalry with that foundation. I was sent to Rood Priory—or Old Bob’s—about twenty-four years ago. The school had then been kept by Old Bob for, I suppose, half a century, and had existed long before. Old Bob’s was one of those genuine specimens of the good old school, in which scarcely anything whatever was taught except the Latin and Greek languages; and they were inculcated principally by the rod. Its scholars, when first I became one of them, mustered nearly a hundred; their number had been greater still. The youngest of us were not more than five or six years old; some of the eldest were verging upon twenty, and might have shaved without affectation. We were divided into six classes, or as we called them, Parts: of which the sixth was the lowest. Our range of study extended from the rudiments of Latin, in the last Part, to Virgil, Horace, Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, Terence, and Greek Tragedy, in the second and first. The first was also called the senior Part. It was allowed various peculiar privileges, and its members, the senior boys, were never flogged, except for high crimes and misdemeanors. They were a sort of monitors, and had to keep order in the school and dining-hall; duties which devolved on them by turns. In fact, Old Bob made them act as his police. The first four Parts did Latin verses, to the composition of which the greater portion of two days in each week was devoted. The general impression at Rood Priory was that Latin versification was the highest possible achievement of the human intellect. Annually, the senior boys competed for a prize in Latin Hexameters. The successful performances were recited at our Public Speaking, which took place at the close of the Midsummer half year. Their Latinity was perfect for the best of reasons; they were arrangements of phrases which had been really penned by Ovid and Virgil.

The native Muse was cultivated a little, too. We were required to commit portions of the ‘Elegant Extracts’ to memory: and the senior boys also wrote English prize-poems, which were clever imitations of the mannerisms (only) of Pope and Dryden.

The ‘usual branches of a solid English education’ were certainly in a rather stunted condition at Old Bob’s. Arithmetic was taught ostensibly; we had to write out a given number of sums weekly, done by what means no matter, in a book. One boy, I recollect, by the particular request of his parents, learned mathematics; that is to say, getting Euclid’s propositions by rote. Geography was sometimes mentioned among us—in connexion with the Argonautic Expedition for instance, or the Garden of the Hesperides. English History we read in classes during the fortnight before the vacations, Old Bob probably conceiving it expedient that his scholars should, if questioned by their friends on the subject, appear to know that there was some difference between William the Conqueror and Oliver Cromwell. Sometimes Milton’s Paradise Lost was substituted for our historical reading, namely, for Goldsmith’s Abridgment. We received rather less instruction in Astronomy than may be presumed to have fallen to the share of Galileo’s judges, and we utterly ignored the use of any globes except those in use at football and cricket. Some few, at their friends’ express stipulation, learned French, Drawing, and Dancing, on sufferance, and grievously against the grain of Old Bob, who considered that modern languages and accomplishments could be acquired during the holidays, or picked up in after-life anyhow; and who suspected that at Rood Priory they were mere pretexts for shirking severer lessons. Certainly these studies involved no whipping, and were interspersed with considerable amusement, at the expense of the French teacher at least, and his countryman the dancing-master.

Our school-house was a large detached building of red brick, slate-roofed, lighted by tall round-arched windows, and entered by a porch, in which vestibule to our Temple of Learning inert or peccant neophytes were castigated. The hall, or refectory, was also detached. We slept, some at Old Bob’s private residence, others in adjoining or adjacent buildings connected with it. The schoolroom, for about a fourth of its height, was wainscoted with dark oak, richly carved with names, each letter of which had been engraven at the risk of a flagellation. The desks, similarly adorned, extended on either side along the wall at right angles with it, interrupted, on that to the left of the entrance, by the two fire-places, senior and junior. Everything among us was thus distinguished; we had a senior and junior field, or playground; a senior and junior fives-court; and a senior, secundus, and junior bridge on the river in which we used to bathe. The boys of every particular Part sat together; each had his own private compartment of the desk, termed his ‘scob.’ A list of the names of the occupants of each desk, in the order of their rank, was pasted on the wall over it. The junior, that is the lowest, had the care of the lighting materials, and was thence styled the ‘Candle-custos.’ There were three seats for the masters; one at the top of the school, another at the bottom, and a third at the side, between the two fire-places. They resembled Professors’ chairs, and during lessons we were stationed in front of them. A large time-piece above the middle chair regulated our operations. Down the whole length of the school, in front of either series of desks, ran a form, the two forms enabling us to be marshalled along them, on occasion, in a couple of lines, leaving an open space in the middle wherein Old Bob could walk to and fro with his cane.

The order of things thus constituted was governed supremely by the Reverend James Roberts, M.A., Senior, otherwise Old Bob; secondarily, by his son, the Rev. James Roberts, M.A., Junior, behind his back called James. In subordination to them we had three other classical masters, and an English master, as he was termed. The business of the latter was to teach writing and arithmetic, to call us of a morning, to distribute among us our ‘battlings,’ or pocket-money, and to summon us at the end of play-hours into school. His hair was light and woolly, he cleared his throat with a bleating noise before he spoke, he had a grave sleepy expression, and prominent teeth; and, of course, we called him ‘Sheep.’ He was a very honest, worthy fellow, but he talked fine; he could not sound the letter h, nor utter a Greek or Latin word without, if possible, making a false quantity; his duties (being English) were looked upon as rather menial, and the science which he professed was accounted mercantile and vulgar; wherefore, on the whole, our somewhat aristocratic community despised this excellent gentleman very much.

Old Bob, in the face, was rather like Socrates: in form, save as to the shoulders, he strongly resembled Punch. His similitude, however, to the sage, was merely physiognomical, unless the ability to have disputed with him in his own vernacular may be added to it. He was intimately versed in what are termed the liberal sciences, though I doubt if, in his case, they had the mollifying effect ascribed to them in the Eton Latin Grammar. With no other kind of science was he acquainted, except that of managing his own affairs. In this, truly, he was a tolerable proficient, and had made money by his school. But if his acquirements were limited, they were sound; and his intellect, though not comprehensive, was strong. He would sometimes say to a clever but eccentric boy—for he used to thee-and-thou us like a Quaker—‘Thou hast every sense, my boy, but common sense.’ Of this faculty, in a practical acceptation, he possessed a fair share himself. Old Bob had a fine sense of justice, too, in his way, and he administered his flogging system reasonably and equitably—as far as rationality or equity were consistent with such a system. There was also not a little benevolence in Old Bob’s composition. It is true that his eyes could not help twinkling when he caught a boy in any mischief, and contrived, to hit him, neatly, on a tense and sensitive part. But I do not think that he flogged principally, or in very great measure, for the love of flogging. He had a traditional belief in the virtues of the rod. He looked upon birch as a necessary stimulant, not knowing that stimulants, whether in the mental or animal economy, are not ordinarily necessary. Then, on the other hand, he was very attentive to the health and comfort of his boys. He took especial care that our meat and other provisions should be of the very best kind; and if his scholars were well flogged, they were also well fed and well cared for.

Old Bob, when first I knew him, was nearly eighty years of age, but hale and robust still. Divers legends were extant respecting the strong man whom he had knocked down in his youth. He dressed the character of the old schoolmaster, from the shovel-hat and powdered bald head to the gaiters, as correctly as if he had proposed to act it in a farce. His voice, I may here remark, was much like Mr. Farren’s in Sir Peter Teazle; only it was slower, deeper, more powerful, and abounded in strong and prolonged emphasis. He was very fond of spouting—in an academical way—and I think I see him now teaching us to gesticulate, by putting himself in an attitude, and giving us an idea of Cicero.

In general, Old Bob was good-tempered, patient, and forbearing, not punishing without fair warning, and then with deliberate dignity. But on peculiar provocation, as by anything like the exhibition of a mutinous spirit, especially on the part of a big boy, he lost all control of himself. His face grew pale, his eyes twinkled ominously, he would puff his cheeks out, and his whole form appeared actually to swell. Then, pulling up his nether garments—a habit with him when in a rage—and his voice shaking with passion, he would exclaim, ‘Take care, Sir. Let me not hear thee say that again. If thou dost, I’ll whip thee. I’d whip thee if thou wast as high as the house! I’d whip thee if thou wast as big as Goliath!! I’d whip thee if thou wast an angel from Heaven!!!’ And it was generally understood among us that he would have done it in either case.

A flogging at the hands of Old Bob was ordinarily the consequence of a series of offences or shortcomings. Sometimes a pupil, often within a brief period, had been guilty of a false concord or quantity. Sometimes he had been caught out of bounds, or had in some other way infringed Old Bob’s ordinances. Sometimes he was denounced for misconduct or idleness by one of the masters. A very common case of punishment would occur thus: Old Bob would suddenly call for the ‘Classicus’ of a part which was under a junior master. The ‘Classicus’ was a register of our respective performances in learning. The eye of Old Bob would light on a succession of bad marks standing opposite the name of some unlucky fellow. He then gradually raised his eyebrows, and began to whiff and whistle. Presently he repeated the delinquent’s name aloud, and proceeded, whistling and whiffing still at each word, to read out the adjoined record, ‘Bradshaw!’ he would cry; ‘Bradshaw!—Hi! hi! hi!—_Malè—malè—malè—mediocriter—malè—quam pessimè—quam pessimè—quam pessimè_——I’ll whip thee!’ And he put down the book, and pushed his spectacles up on his forehead. ‘Bring me the rod!—Bradshaw!—Come here to me, my worthy, good Sir. I’ll _whip_ thee. _I_ will! Go into the porch!’ So saying, he gave the culprit a shove at the nape of the neck, which almost sent him sprawling headlong. ‘Rod—boy—the rod! Jones—you—Brown you—go in.’ These boys were to keep the porch doors. ‘Robinson—go too.’ The fourth boy was wanted to sustain the drapery of the victim. ‘And here—you, Sir—Smith!—you—go in as well.’ This last was some youth who had been misbehaving himself lately, and whom Old Bob compelled to witness the infliction, that he might profit by it in the way of example. They all went into the porch, and Old Bob, hitching up his smallclothes, followed. ‘My poor boy,’ Old Bob would say, when he had got the criminal ‘hoisted,’ ‘I am sorry for thee. I told thee how it would be. I said I would whip thee if thou didst not behave better, and—_I will_.’ Swish!

The chastisement generally lasted about five minutes. Old Bob never inflicted more than half-a-dozen stripes, but he waited a considerable time between them, partly that each might have its full effect, partly that he might improve the occasion for the edification of the other delinquent. ‘You’ll be the next, Sir,’ he would tell the latter: ‘You’ll be the next!’ A prediction usually soon fulfilled.

Old Bob had a very high idea of the force of example. Incredible as it may appear, it is a fact that he would send a troublesome pupil to see an execution. I once witnessed his doing this. The boy in question, was incorrigibly mischievous, and given to roguish pranks. Addressing him by name, Old Bob said, ‘There is a man to be hanged this morning. Go and see him, my boy. Thou art a bad boy, and it will do thee good. You,’—turning to an elder boy,—‘you go with him and take charge of him.’ Truly this was carrying out the principle of the ‘good old school.’

For high crimes and misdemeanours the penalty was flogging in public. Swearing and profanity were the chief of these. At prayers we used to kneel along the two forms in the middle of the school. The ‘candle-custodes’ alone remained at their desks during evening-prayer time. One of these young gentlemen, once upon a night, got a copper cap, and employed his devotional leisure in fixing it on the head of a nail. The moment the final ‘Amen’ was uttered, before we could rise, he exploded the cap. The report was terrific in the silence of the large schoolroom. Old Bob insisted on the name of the transgressor being surrendered, and flogged him instantly on the spot. His rage on this occasion was extreme, and was mingled with a strange agitation. The next day this was explained. ‘What was it thou didst let off last night?’ demanded Old Bob of the irreverent youth, who was one of his particularly bad boys. ‘A percussion cap,’ was the answer. ‘Per-per-what?’ ‘Percussion cap, Sir.’ ‘Hum!’ said Old Bob, musingly, ‘I won’t expel thee _this_ time, Sir,—I won’t _expel_ thee.’ He evidently did not know what a percussion cap was, whilst, dimly understanding that it was not exactly a firearm, he seemed relieved from the suspicion that his scholar had attempted his life.

Such implicit confidence had Old Bob in birch, that he imagined he could absolutely whip us up Parnassus, and he very often flogged a boy for not being able to do his verses. ‘I’ll make thee a poet, my boy,’ he used to say, ‘or the rod shall.’ Flagellation formed so essential a part of his system, that he had a large quantity of birch-broom kept constantly at hand in an old cabinet, which may have belonged to the Monastery of Rood itself. The rod-boy—one of the scholars appointed to the office—not only ‘hoisted’ the sufferer, and had the custody of the birch, but also manufactured the rods: and soundly was he drubbed by us, if he did not carefully knock the buds out of them. I think James—who shared the power of the scourge—insisted that his rods should not be tampered with. At any rate, the skin upon which he operated looked afterwards as if it had received a charge of small shot. Such correction, it is obvious, might be repeated a little too often; and it was a rule of Old Bob’s that no boy should be flogged more than once a week. Some, however, were flogged regularly as the week came round. I recollect one boy with whom this was the case for a long time: owing, I believe, to his sheer inability to construe Virgil. I heard of him in after-life; oh, Heaven! such a stupid man!

A minor species of correction was inflicted with the cane, generally on the hands. Old Bob confined himself to two ‘spats’ on the tips of the fingers; or, as he called them, ‘summits of the digits.’ In spite of the sufferer’s attempts to dodge him, he generally hit these sensitive points exactly, to his manifest delight. James struck from four to six blows across the palm with all his strength. I have seen a little boy cast himself on the floor and writhe in the agony of this torture.

James, at the time to which I am referring, appeared to be upwards of fifty. Perhaps he looked older than he was, through powdering his hair. He was much more hasty and irascible than his father. He punished violently and promptly. Old Bob, on the other hand, would sometimes say, ‘I won’t whip thee now, my boy; but I _will_ whip thee. Not now—no. I’ll let it hang over thy head.’ And so he did, occasionally, for some weeks; and whipped him at last. James was rather a better scholar, and somewhat worse informed in other respects than Old Bob. He had small regard for a plodding student, and great partiality for anyone who could make neat verses. It being a tenet with him that not a moment should ever be wasted, he insisted on our taking books into the hall to read during meals. In conformity with this principle, it was said that, having a benefice in the neighbourhood at which he preached weekly, he used to drive there, reading Horace, with his whip stuck upright in his vehicle. These itinerary studies ended, as might have been foreseen, in a serious accident; his horse running at its own sweet will over a cow in the road, and spilling him. He had a preposterous antipathy to the least noise, and his appearance in the school produced an awful silence immediately. James’s greatest defect was the absolute dependence which he placed on the word of the inferior masters. In answer to a complaint from one of them, unlike Old Bob, he would never hear a boy speak, but punished him instantly. Yet he was naturally of a kind disposition; and his alacrity in flogging, arose partly from impatience and irritability—partly from his having been brought up in that faith.

The severities practised in Old Bob’s little kingdom, were not unattended with the effects which they sometimes have in larger monarchies. We had an under-master, whom I will call Bateson; a north-countryman, with a disgusting brogue, only less repulsive than his unwholesome looks and malicious temper. He was continually—as though from a savage delight—procuring some boy or other to be punished. Not long before my time, his conduct had created a regular rebellion. A conspiracy, headed by the senior boys, was formed against him. An opportunity was taken one evening when he was alone in the school. By an arrangement preconcerted with the ‘candle-custodes,’ most of the lights were extinguished. Books, ink-bottles, missiles of all kinds, were flung at his head. The larger boys set upon him and gave him a severe beating. Had not the school-door, which they had premeditatedly fastened, been forced upon, there is no knowing to what extent they would have maltreated him. As it was, he was shockingly bruised and disfigured. The expulsion of some of the ringleaders, and the flogging of several of the other rioters, was the issue of this transaction. Bateson, untaught by what he had suffered, continued to be as spiteful as ever. His delight was to give us tasks beyond our ability, that we might be chastised for not doing them; and he stimulated our exertions by menaces and abuse. Often did we vow to thrash this dull spiteful pedant, if we caught him anywhere after we should leave school; and some of us, I think, had left it a pretty long time before the resolution thus formed, was abandoned.

Consistently enough with his notions about the rod and the gallows, Old Bob not only allowed, but encouraged his boys to settle their disputes by fighting. After the battle he usually enquired who was the aggressor; and if Right had triumphed, he often gave the victor a shilling. Two boys who, for talking in the hall at breakfast, had been made to stand on the form together, contrived to quarrel while thus exalted, and came to blows. Old Bob being present with his cane (misdoers were commonly ‘given up’ to be ‘spatted’ at breakfast-time), rushed instantly from his table to the scene of action. But instead of using the instrument of correction to visit this aggravated breach of discipline, he actually employed it in keeping order during the combat, forgetting the offence in the delight which it afforded him. Our fistic encounters were managed strictly in accordance with the laws of the ‘noble art of self-defence.’ They had the regular accessories of seconds, and a ring, added to the superintendence of ‘Sheep,’ and sometimes, too, the paternal countenance of Old Bob himself! They were divided into rounds, they lasted as long as real prize-fights, and issued, mostly, in similar results to the combatants, who generally pummelled each other so severely that they were forced to retire afterwards to the sick-room. There, strangely enough, they often became great friends. I recollect one desperate contest occurring between the son of a celebrated comic actor and a boy whose family resided in the neighbourhood. The spectators from the public road which skirted the field—they were mostly farmers on horseback, it being market-day—discovered who were the combatants, and exhorted them by name to ‘go it.’ The heroes, I think, fought for upwards of an hour. Both were severely punished—of course I do not mean by Old Bob. On another occasion I was present when a boy in fighting was knocked down. His leg, as he fell, bent under him and was broken. I heard the bone snap.

It will be inquired whether Old Bob’s arrangements included anything that could counteract, or modify, at least, the not very humanising influences of his general system. There was plenty of what is termed religious instruction—mingled always with infusion of birch. We had prayers morning and evening, and a collect in the middle of the day read by one of the senior boys; and as stripes would have been the penalty of a smile, if discovered, our devotions were characterised by great decorum. Before and after dinner we had a Latin grace, pronounced by a young gentleman standing on a form, but a senior boy was liable to be called upon to say it at his bodily peril. The essential difference between the two graces lay in the words ‘_sumus sumpturi_,’ ‘we are about to receive,’ and ‘_accepimus_,’ ‘we have received.’ As not all who could repeat these words attended precisely to their meaning, the distinction was occasionally disregarded, with what consequences may be imagined. Two boys, morning and evening, each elevated on a desk, read a chapter in the New Testament a-piece, as loud as they were able, whilst Old Bob generally kept bidding them to speak louder and slower. The rest had to follow them—the higher Parts, in the Latin and Greek Testament—and take up the text when called on, under the usual liability. It was sometimes a fearful thing to have to read from the desk. St. Paul, in the Second Epistle to Timothy, alludes to one Alexander the Coppersmith. There was a ragamuffin who used to hang about the field-palings, on whom we had conferred this appellation, which, consequently, to our mind had a most ludicrous association. When the fatal name was pronounced, every breath in the school was held to stifle a laugh. Imagine the agony of the unlucky boy obliged to read it in all gravity, deliberately, and, as Old Bob required, ‘loud and slow.’

The loud and slow style of delivery was especially insisted upon in our elocution. Old Bob made all his boys recite. He caused the speaker to mount a table at one end of the schoolroom, he, Old Bob, sitting at the other. The orator had first to perform a gymnastic feat, consisting in putting himself in the first position, and stooping till his fingers’ ends nearly touched his instep—this was the Rood Priory regulation-bow. He then made his speech, lifting his arms up and down alternately, which, if he failed to do with vigour, Old Bob bellowed for ‘Action! Action!’ The mounting on the table was intended to cure us of bashfulness. On my first appearance on that conspicuous altitude, my brain reeled, and I was near falling off for very giddiness.

All this training was a preparation for the public speaking already mentioned. We spoke from a stage erected at the upper end of the school. Our auditors at this exhibition were our friends and the gentry of the neighbourhood. We recited verses, such as ‘Hohenlinden,’ and ‘The Burial of Sir John Moore,’ ‘Edward and Warwick,’ ‘Brutus and Cassius,’ and divers scenes from other poets and dramatists, ancient and modern. Whatever was the character, the speaker appeared in full dress. Once, the part of ‘Mawworm’ was assigned to me. I enacted it with my hair frizzled, in an olive coat, black waistcoat, white trousers, silk stockings, and pumps.

The great attention paid by Old Bob to our acting, seems to indicate that he supposed we were, for the most part, intended for the church, the bar, or political life. What opinion then, of his system, are we to form, judged of by its results? Did it contribute to the formation of any great minds or distinguished characters? At this moment I know of but three persons of any eminence, pupils of his, who have reflected credit upon their master. One of these was a celebrated statesman, now deceased, who, however, completed his education at Eton. Another was a Greek scholar of some repute, whether as yet surviving or not, I am ignorant. The third is a living ornament to his College. This last had a natural aptitude for learning, and inasmuch as he never needed the stimulus of the rod, he cannot be considered indebted for his attainments to that element in Old Bob’s method of tuition. Not one single stupid or even idle boy, within my experience, did Old Bob with all his flogging improve in the least; and his severities, I am sure, disgusted some, possessed of good abilities, with study. For my own part, I never was flogged; but the fear of being so kept me continually in misery: and as long as I was subject to it, hindered my advancement, prevented me from learning anything with pleasure, and caused me to look upon my tasks as impositions, and to perform them with ill will, in a sulky, perfunctory manner. I shall never forget the torment I suffered in cramming long lessons in Greek Grammar, under terror of the rod. Exert myself as I would, I could not get anything dry well by rote; whereas, poetry, or whatever else interested me, I remembered without an effort. This was lucky for me; my good performances were a set-off against my bad. I knew then, as well as I know now, how worse than foolish and idiotic was the notion of whipping a boy into parrot-learning. I perceived then as clearly as I see at this present time, that memory is no single power of the mind; that there is as much of feeling in it as of intellect; that we best remember the ideas which we delight to dwell upon; and that the proper way of imparting knowledge is to render it as pleasant as possible, or if this cannot be done, to instil it by degrees: to administer the medicine whose flavour you cannot disguise, in minute doses. I say, I knew all this: judge then with what different sentiments from those presented in the catechism, I, a boy, looked upon my pastors and masters, who knew it not.

But I can speak positively as well as negatively as to the efficacy of the flogging system. I was fast sinking into despair of my capacity, and arming myself with dogged obstinacy against the consequences, when Old Bob gave up the school. His former pupil, the Statesman, during his brief tenure of office, had secured him a prebendal stall. Rood Priory then came under the sole management of James, assisted by one of his brothers. On his retirement, Old Bob wisely dismissed Bateson, with whom he would not trust James. As wisely, he engaged as second master a teacher in every respect Bateson’s opposite. This gentleman made our work as easy to us as he could; his manner towards us was kind and affectionate; he endeavoured to interest us in our studies; and he urged us to exertion by recommending proficiency for reward, instead of giving up dulness for punishment. Under this management, I, previously considered a dunce, rose rapidly to the first Part of the school; and my career terminated in my writing the English Prize Poem, a pretty good burlesque—though I intended it seriously—on the more moody portions of the writings of Lord Byron.

James did not preside over the concerns of Rood Priory for more than a year-and-a-half. At the end of that time he abdicated in favour of his brother. But the latter was quite incompetent to wield the rod of Old Bob. He permitted a degree of license among his subjects which soon demoralised his empire. He then abruptly attempted to restore discipline. The result was a rebellion. His scholars combined against him in a regular ‘barring out.’ The mutiny was quelled, and the principal insurgents were flogged. But the affair became public, and fatally damaged the school; which instantly fell off, and, as certain writers phrase it, after a few convulsive struggles, ceased to exist. And so there was an end of Rood Priory; one of the last, I am happy to believe, of the genuine ‘good old schools.’

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Renumbered footnotes. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.