Anthony Trollope - Autobiography of Anthony Trollope

was when we lived there, is to be seen in the frontispiece to the

first edition of that novel, having the good fortune to be delineated

by no less a pencil than that of John Millais.

My two elder brothers had been sent as day-boarders to Harrow

School from the bigger house, and may probably have been received

among the aristocratic crowd,--not on equal terms, because a

day-boarder at Harrow in those days was never so received,--but at

any rate as other day-boarders. I do not suppose that they were well

treated, but I doubt whether they were subjected to the ignominy

which I endured. I was only seven, and I think that boys at seven

are now spared among their more considerate seniors. I was never

spared; and was not even allowed to run to and fro between our house

and the school without a daily purgatory. No doubt my appearance

was against me. I remember well, when I was still the junior boy

in the school, Dr. Butler, the head-master, stopping me in the

street, and asking me, with all the clouds of Jove upon his brow

and the thunder in his voice, whether it was possible that Harrow

School was disgraced by so disreputably dirty a boy as I! Oh, what

I felt at that moment! But I could not look my feelings. I do not

doubt that I was dirty;--but I think that he was cruel. He must

have known me had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was

in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognise

me by my face.

At this time I was three years at Harrow; and, as far as I can

remember, I was the junior boy in the school when I left it.

Then I was sent to a private school at Sunbury, kept by Arthur

Drury. This, I think, must have been done in accordance with the

advice of Henry Drury, who was my tutor at Harrow School, and my

father's friend, and who may probably have expressed an opinion that

my juvenile career was not proceeding in a satisfactory manner at

Harrow. To Sunbury I went, and during the two years I was there,

though I never had any pocket-money, and seldom had much in the

way of clothes, I lived more nearly on terms of equality with other

boys than at any other period during my very prolonged school-days.

Even here, I was always in disgrace. I remember well how, on one

occasion, four boys were selected as having been the perpetrators

of some nameless horror. What it was, to this day I cannot even

guess; but I was one of the four, innocent as a babe, but adjudged

to have been the guiltiest of the guilty. We each had to write out

a sermon, and my sermon was the longest of the four. During the

whole of one term-time we were helped last at every meal. We were

not allowed to visit the playground till the sermon was finished.

Mine was only done a day or two before the holidays. Mrs. Drury,

when she saw us, shook her head with pitying horror. There were

ever so many other punishments accumulated on our heads. It broke

my heart, knowing myself to be innocent, and suffering also under

the almost equally painful feeling that the other three--no doubt

wicked boys--were the curled darlings of the school, who would never

have selected me to share their wickedness with them. I contrived

to learn, from words that fell from Mr. Drury, that he condemned

me because I, having come from a public school, might be supposed

to be the leader of wickedness! On the first day of the next term

he whispered to me half a word that perhaps he had been wrong.

With all a stupid boy's slowness, I said nothing; and he had not

the courage to carry reparation further. All that was fifty years

ago, and it burns me now as though it were yesterday. What lily-livered

curs those boys must have been not to have told the truth!--at any

rate as far as I was concerned. I remember their names well, and

almost wish to write them here.

When I was twelve there came the vacancy at Winchester College which

I was destined to fill. My two elder brothers had gone there, and

the younger had been taken away, being already supposed to have lost

his chance of New College. It had been one of the great ambitions

of my father's life that his three sons, who lived to go to Winchester,

should all become fellows of New College. But that suffering man

was never destined to have an ambition gratified. We all lost the

prize which he struggled with infinite labour to put within our

reach. My eldest brother all but achieved it, and afterwards went

to Oxford, taking three exhibitions from the school, though he

lost the great glory of a Wykamist. He has since made himself well

known to the public as a writer in connection with all Italian

subjects. He is still living as I now write. But my other brother

died early.

While I was at Winchester my father's affairs went from bad to worse.

He gave up his practice at the bar, and, unfortunate that he was,

took another farm. It is odd that a man should conceive,--and in

this case a highly educated and a very clever man,--that farming

should be a business in which he might make money without any

special education or apprenticeship. Perhaps of all trades it is

the one in which an accurate knowledge of what things should be

done, and the best manner of doing them, is most necessary. And it is

one also for success in which a sufficient capital is indispensable.

He had no knowledge, and, when he took this second farm, no capital.

This was the last step preparatory to his final ruin.

Soon after I had been sent to Winchester my mother went to America,

taking with her my brother Henry and my two sisters, who were then

no more than children. This was, I think, in 1827. I have no clear

knowledge of her object, or of my father's; but I believe that

he had an idea that money might be made by sending goods,--little

goods, such as pin-cushions, pepper-boxes, and pocket-knives,--out

to the still unfurnished States; and that she conceived that an

opening might be made for my brother Henry by erecting some bazaar

or extended shop in one of the Western cities. Whence the money

came I do not know, but the pocket-knives and the pepper-boxes were

bought and the bazaar built. I have seen it since in the town of

Cincinnati,--a sorry building! But I have been told that in those

days it was an imposing edifice. My mother went first, with my

sisters and second brother. Then my father followed them, taking my

elder brother before he went to Oxford. But there was an interval

of some year and a half during which he and I were in Winchester

together.

Over a period of forty years, since I began my manhood at a desk

in the Post Office, I and my brother, Thomas Adolphus, have been

fast friends. There have been hot words between us, for perfect

friendship bears and allows hot words. Few brothers have had more

of brotherhood. But in those schooldays he was, of all my foes,

the worst. In accordance with the practice of the college, which

submits, or did then submit, much of the tuition of the younger

boys from the elder, he was my tutor; and in his capacity of teacher

and ruler, he had studied the theories of Draco. I remember well

how he used to exact obedience after the manner of that lawgiver.

Hang a little boy for stealing apples, he used to say, and other

little boys will not steal apples. The doctrine was already exploded

elsewhere, but he stuck to it with conservative energy. The result

was that, as a part of his daily exercise, he thrashed me with a big

stick. That such thrashings should have been possible at a school

as a continual part of one's daily life, seems to me to argue a

very ill condition of school discipline.

At this period I remember to have passed one set of holidays--the

midsummer holidays--in my father's chambers in Lincoln's Inn. There

was often a difficulty about the holidays,--as to what should be

done with me. On this occasion my amusement consisted in wandering

about among those old deserted buildings, and in reading Shakespeare

out of a bi-columned edition, which is still among my books. It

was not that I had chosen Shakespeare, but that there was nothing

else to read.

After a while my brother left Winchester and accompanied my father

to America. Then another and a different horror fell to my fate.

My college bills had not been paid, and the school tradesmen who

administered to the wants of the boys were told not to extend their

credit to me. Boots, waistcoats, and pocket-handkerchiefs, which,

with some slight superveillance, were at the command of other

scholars, were closed luxuries to me. My schoolfellows of course

knew that it was so, and I became a Pariah. It is the nature of

boys to be cruel. I have sometimes doubted whether among each other

they do usually suffer much, one from the other's cruelty; but I

suffered horribly! I could make no stand against it. I had no friend

to whom I could pour out my sorrows. I was big, and awkward, and

ugly, and, I have no doubt, sulked about in a most unattractive

manner. Of course I was ill-dressed and dirty. But ah! how well

I remember all the agonies of my young heart; how I considered

whether I should always be alone; whether I could not find my way

up to the top of that college tower, and from thence put an end to

everything? And a worse thing came than the stoppage of the supplies

from the shopkeepers. Every boy had a shilling a week pocket-money,

which we called battels, and which was advanced to us out of the

pocket of the second master. On one awful day the second master

announced to me that my battels would be stopped. He told me the

reason,--the battels for the last half-year had not been repaid; and

he urged his own unwillingness to advance the money. The loss of a

shilling a week would not have been much,--even though pocket-money

from other sources never reached me,--but that the other boys all

knew it! Every now and again, perhaps three or four times in a

half-year, these weekly shillings were given to certain servants

of the college, in payment, it may be presumed, for some extra

services. And now, when it came to the turn of any servant, he

received sixty-nine shillings instead of seventy, and the cause

of the defalcation was explained to him. I never saw one of those

servants without feeling I had picked his pocket.

When I had been at Winchester something over three years, my father

returned to England and took me away. Whether this was done because