My Life as an Author

suppose it proper to state very briefly when and where I was born, with a word as to my parentage. July 17, 1810, was

, and secondly, as offered by the Duke of Wellington); my mother, Ellin Devis Marris, being daughter of Robert Marris, a good landscape ar

to religious persecution in the evil days of Charles V., our remote ancestors being styled Von Topheres (chieftains, or

icer, signed by Cromwell and Fairfax; and several of her relatives (besides her father) were distinguished artists. In particular, her uncle (my wife

attained wealth and position both in Canada and the United States; notably Sir Charles Tuppe

f young children. I remember, too, that the broad meadows, since developed into Regent's Park and Primrose Hill, then "truly rural," and even up to Chalk Farm, then notorious for duels, were my nursery ramblings in search of cowslips and new milk.

e Third: it must have been during some lucid interval, perhaps after the Great Thanksgiving at St. Paul's. My father took his little boy with him to call upon the Earl, not thinking to see the King; but when we came in there was his kind-hearted Majesty,

signed-for twelve years-to a French prison! I have heard my father tell this tale, and noted early how true was Dr. Watts' awkward line, "On little things what great depend." I might say more about warnings in dreams and other somnolencies, whereof we all have experiences. For instance, my "Dream of Ambition" in Proverbial Philosophy was a real one. And this reminds me now of another like sort of spiritual monition alluded to in my Proverbial Essay on "Truth in Things False," which has several times occurred to myself, as this, for example: Years ago, in Devonshire, for the first time, I was on the top of a coach passing through a town-I think it was Crediton-and I had the strange feeling that

n artistic family. As to my father's surroundings, his brother Peter, a consul-general in Spain, wrote a tragedy called Pelayo; and I possess half-a-dozen French songs, labelled by my father "in my late dear father's handwriting," but whether or not original, I cannot tell. As a Guernseyman, he might well be as much French as En

ut surely spirits are more individual, as innumerable instances prove, where children do not take after their parents. If, however, I may mention my own small exp

lication; and as I cannot improve upon it, and it has never

early revelations, I wish at once to state that, although at times necessarily naming names (for the too frequent use of dashes and asterisks must otherwise destroy the verisimilitude of plain truth-telling), I desire to say nothing against or for either the dead or the living beyond their just deserts, and I protest against any charge of unreasonable want of ch

well-remembered day-teacher in "little Latin and less Greek" of the name of Swallow, whom I thought a wit

is stone a

ghs and no

s gone or

ws and no

e a high opinion of the pundit who read with me Cornelius Nepos and C?sar and some portions of that hopele

his care. All I care to remember of this false priest (and there were many such of old, whatever may be the case now) are his cruel punishments, which passed for discipline, his careful cringing to parents, and his careless indifference towards their children, and in brief his total unfitness for the twin duties of pastor and teacher. A large private school of mixed ages and classes is perilously liable to infect

son should be

dstrong, or all

public with a

ischief only

ish growth and

ity and lew

st others eminent, the famous naval author Kingston, well known from cabin-boy to admiral; there was also Lord Paulet, some others of noble birth, and the two Middletons, nick-named Yankees, whom years after I visited at their ruined mansion in South Carolina after the Confederate War.

d with the much-prized emerald May-bugs; for the whole garden was liberally thrown open to us beyond the gravelled playground; all being now given over to monks and nuns. Then I recollect how a rarely-dark annular eclipse of the sun convulsed the whole school, bringing smoked glass to a high premium; and there was a notable boy's library of amusing travels and stories, all eagerly devoured; and old Phulax the

ons were notoriously difficult, and those before me would be inextricable puzzles now; however, we had to do them, and we did them, unhelped by any teacher but our own industry. As for the masters in school, two more ignorant old parsons than Chapman and "Bob Watki" could not readily be found; and though the four others, Lloyd, Dickens, Irvine, and Penny were somewhat more intelligent, still all six in the lower school were occasionally summoned to a "concio," if the interpretation of any ordinary passage in Homer or Virgil or Horace was haply in dispute between a monitor and his class. In the upper school the single really excellent teacher and good clergyman,

io, a public terror to evil-doers, or doers of nothing, but usually in a sort of side chapel to the lower school where the whipping-block stood. Who could tolerate such things now? and who can wonder that I, as a lad, proclaimed that I would rather die than be flogged, for I had resolved in that event to commit justifiable homicide on my flogger? I do not mea

e Weigh-house in Thames Street issued with my leave as a tractate useful to the present generation. And while there was so much fuss made as to the criminality of a false quantity in Greek, or a deficient acquaintance with those awkward verbs in "Mi," or above all a false concord (every one of which derelictions in duty involved severe punishment), let us remember that all this time Holywell Street was suffered to infect Charterhouse with

. I was technically responsible for this open insult offered to Hibernian nobility, however well disposed to look another way and let lynch-law take its course. Accordingly, the Doctor had me up for punishment, and he inflicted an almost impossible imposition, Book Epsilon of the Iliad (the longest of all) to be translated word for word, English and Greek, and to be given to him in MS. within a month (it would have been work for a year), that or expulsion. Had Mr. Dillon been a plebeian, no notice would have been taken of the matter, but he was an honourable, so Russell mu

had struck him behind the ear, stone-dead. Again as to that pump; it was sometimes maliciously used for sousing unfortunate day-boys, who were allowed two minutes law out of school to enable them to escape pursuit after lessons, most unjustly, and injuriously, seeing that old Sutton founded his

lead token, whereof I found several; it is only a wonder that we did not unearth pestilence, but mould is fortunately very antiseptic. Another playground peculiarity was that after the hoop season, usually driven in duplicate or triplicate, the hoops were "stored" or "shied" into the branching elms, from which they were again brought down by hockey-sticks flung at them; a great boon to the smaller boys who thus gratuitously became possessed of valuable properties. And for all else, there were fights behind the school, in those p

though it is now humiliated into a local charity school. I remember some humorous scenes there, chiefly owing to the master's notorious niggardliness. Andrew had some Gruyere cheese, easily accessible to the boyish plunderers of his larder. Now we had complained that our slabs of butter laid between the cut sides of the rolls often were salt and strong, so one "Punsonby" (afterward

r near the larder aforesaid. Of course the boys made a raid upon such spolia opima, and divers portions of that thick hide were exhibited as Indian rubber: but Andrew never knew that many other things vanished, and that for example Knighton u

both morality and religion were ignored by the seven clergymen who reaped fortunes by neglecting five hundred boys. If more memories are wanted of those times, here are two; the planned famine on one occasion, when-under monitorial inspiration-all the juniors clamoured for "more, more," seeing they had slabbed on the underside of the tables masses of bread and butter supposed

ht in my father's carriage by the back way of Clerkenwell to Charterhouse in order to avoid the crowds of cattle; and I well remember that sometimes we would utilise apples and nuts from the dessert as missiles from our carriage window as we

to ask Messrs. "Punsonby," Yates, & Co. to promote it. This they promised to do, and did after an original fashion. Several pounds worth of pence and half-pence were distributed through the house, so that when Andrew with his traitorous aides went round to collect monies, it miraculously happened to be all coppers, unrelieved by a single sparkle of silver or gold. On which, in a red rage (and he often was in the like) he flung the whole bowlful into the long-room fire, from the ashes whereof for days after the small boys gladly collected hot half-pence. We must recollect that the canny Scot was a mean over-reaching man, so perhaps he was well paid out. Soon after the wedding, the bridegroom held high festival, and gave a grand dinner to all the masters. Our big boys were equal to the occasion, and as the hired waiters from the Falcon brought out the viands (all was a delusive peace as they went in) our harpies flew upon the spoil, and each meat, fish and fowl was cleared off the great dishes held between the helpless hands of the astonished servitors! It was really too bad, but if a man is so manifestly unpopular no doubt he deserves it. Rugbeians would not have so served Arnold. Nearly all my schoolmates are dead, and I cannot call on Ch

quite ignored by the clerical boobies who then professed to teach young gentlemen all that they needed to know. Sixty years ago I perceived what we all see now (teste Lord Sherborne) that a most imperfect classical education, such as was then provided for us, was the least useful introduction to the real business of life, except that it was fashionable, and gave a man some false prestige in the circle of society. At about sixteen I left Charterhouse for a private tutor, Dr. Stocker, then head of Elizabeth College, Guernsey, seeing my father wished to do him a service for kindly private reasons; I was not at the College, but a pupil in his own house: however, as this other Rev. D.D. proved a failure, I was passed on to a Rev. Mr. Twopeny of Long Wittenham, near Dorchester, staying with him about a year with like l

tails of early life and primitive literature happened to me, between school and college. Truly, much of this amounts to recording trivialities; but boyhood, not to say life also, is made up of