VI
To some it may be astonishing to find young men eager to get through their university course in order to get back to the old school in which they want to work for the whole of their lives. Yet there is no kind of work more delightful to those who are born for it than that of a master in a public school. Anyone with ordinary powers of insight and sympathy can teach a pupil willing to be taught. The work of the schoolmaster is more than to teach the willing; it is to convert the unwilling into the willing; to make the indolent active, to stimulate the flagging, and to watch over every boy under his care. There are the pleasures of authority and power for him; he is an unquestioned dictator; he is a judge; he awards punishments and prizes. It is not a line that makes many demands upon the intellect. Most schoolmasters never advance beyond the routine of their daily work; the mathematician forgets the higher mathematics; the chemist ceases his research; the scholar works no more at his subjects; all are content with the knowledge that they have acquired, and with the equipment that is wanted for the day’s work.
On the other hand, to one who is not born for that kind of work the position is by no means pleasant, and to some it is intolerable. In my own case it was not pleasant, but it was not intolerable. After a few months of looking about and waiting, during which I made certain first attempts at journalism, I took a mastership in a school. The school was Leamington College, and I was chosen as mathematical master, with the understanding that I was to be ordained and to become, in addition, chaplain to the college. The head-master at the time was the Rev. E. St. John Parry, a good scholar and, I think, a good schoolmaster. The town was full of pleasant people. Some of them were hospitable to me, and I have very friendly recollections of the place. The boys belonged chiefly to the higher class in the town. I formed an alliance with another master. We took a small house and made ourselves comfortable; the hours were by no means long, and we were not, as is the case with many schools, surrounded by boys all day and every evening.
While at Leamington I had a great experience. I have said that in those days very few of the undergraduates knew anything about foreign travel. In my own case, for instance, at twenty-three years of age what had I seen? I had never been abroad at all. Of England I had seen London, Cambridge, Ely, Winchester, Liverpool, my native town, and the Isle of Wight. It seems to a modern young man who runs about everywhere, and is more familiar with Cairo than with Cheapside, a poor show. Mine, however, was not by any means an exceptional case. The younger dons had begun to travel: in the famous tour—is it still famous?—of “Brown, Jones, and Robinson,” one at least of the three was a Cambridge man. They took reading parties to the Lakes and into Scotland—is Clough’s poem, his long-vacation pastoral, “The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich” still remembered? They went about with knapsacks, just as the young fellows with bicycles now go about, but they walked. And they had begun the craze for Alpine climbing, which is still with us, somewhat moderated. It was the beginning of athletics. The men who trudged with the knapsacks were called “Mussulmen”—a subtle and crafty joke.
It was with the greatest joy that I received a proposal to join Calverley and Peile on a walking tour. They proposed to try the Tyrol, then off the beaten track, with no modern hotels and little or no experience of tourists. With us was Samuel Walton, a Fellow of St. John’s, one of the first of those who braved the world and wore a beard. He was also one of the most kindly and amiable of creatures; well read, sympathetic, always in good temper, and the best travelling companion possible. He became afterwards Rector of Fulbourne, and died at two-and-thirty of consumption.
It was arranged that I should join Walton at Heidelberg, where he had been learning German for three or four months; that we were to go on to Innsbruck, where Calverley and Peile would join us, and that then the knapsack business would begin. I carried with me a flannel suit, which at the outset looked quite nice and cool; I wore a pair of stout boots studded with nails for walking on ice; in my knapsack I had a spare shirt, a nightshirt, another collar, a brush and comb, socks, handkerchiefs, toothbrush, pipe and tobacco. I had no change of clothes, and my flannels were a light grey in colour. Thus equipped I started for a six weeks’ journey. The other men were as lightly clad and as slenderly provided.
It was all perfectly delightful. I believe, but I am not sure, that I went through by way of Ostend to Cologne, a journey then of about twenty-four hours. From Cologne I got to Königswinter, saw the Drachenfels, and went up the Rhine. I remember that there was a delightful American family on board the boat. I made my way to Heidelberg, and I found Walton waiting for me. The other day I was at Heidelberg again, and I tried to find the place where we stayed, but failed. It was a lodging, not a hotel, and we took our meals at a students’ restaurant, where things were cheap and plentiful, and where the wine was of a thinness and sourness inconceivable to one whose ideas of wine were based on port and sherry. We saw the students marching about in their flat caps, with shawls over their shoulders; we saw them in their beer-drinking, and we saw them at a duel with swords—one is glad to have seen so much. We wandered over the castle—there was no inclined railway up the hill in those days; we bathed in the Neckar, ice-cold and swift; we climbed the opposite hill and discovered another castle. We talked German religiously—there were maidens at our lodgings, who made it pleasant to learn their language. I had read a good deal of German at school and afterwards, so that I had a foundation in grammar and vocabulary. One wants very little grammar to get along in German, and to understand it. It is the vocabulary that is wanted. By dint of finding out the names of everything in German, I made rapid progress in a helter-skelter way. I was sorry to leave Heidelberg, and should have been content to give up the mountains and the glaciers, and to complete my German studies in this very pleasant manner.
However, we had to go. I forget the geography; we went on to Innsbruck, somehow. I remember that we passed a lovely lake, called, I think, the Aachen See; that we stopped at a fashionable hotel filled with Germans; and that we took two or three preliminary climbs in the hills. However, we got to Innsbruck; and while we waited for the other two, we climbed a big rolling mountain, not a peak, close to the ancient town. Then the other two men came and we began our march.
Where did we go? I don’t know. Down the Zeller Thal, where they sang to us in the evening, and we sang to them. Calverley had a pleasing tenor, Walton an excellent bass, and my voice, though of poor quality, was tolerably high. We sang the old glees, “All among the Barley”; “Cares that Canker”; “Hark! the Lark”; and so on. The Tyrolese were good enough to applaud. They were, I remember, extremely friendly.
Then we came to a mountain—was it the Gross Glockner?—which we proposed to climb. Heavens! How high it looked! and how steep were the sides! I, for one, was delighted, I confess, when our guides came and said that the mountain was too dangerous; that there had been so much rain that the snow slopes were not safe; in a word, they would not take us.
So we wandered elsewhere. I remember getting to a hut high on a mountain side; they gave us something to eat; we slept on straw; in the morning we started at half past four with a breakfast of fried eggs and coarse bread and melted snow. We had before us a “low pass.” We should get to our halting place at four or five in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we took a wrong line and crossed a high pass, not a low pass. We had no food of any kind with us; only a single flask with schnaps; it was the hardest day’s work I had ever done. Finally we got to our inn at half past eight in the evening. They gave us veal cutlets and bread; and after supper, I, for my part, lay down on the floor and slept till eight next morning.
It was a glorious time, but the days passed all too quickly. At Meran I had to leave the party and get home as fast as I could. The flannel suit was a sight to behold. Cruel thorns had lacerated the skirts, rains had fallen upon it, discolouration disfigured it, and I had to get through Switzerland and France in the most disreputable rig possible to imagine. Part of my journey was a night spent in a diligence. My fellow passengers were two nuns, or sisters. One of them was elderly, the other was young, and we talked the whole night through. They asked endless questions about England. We were not tired or sleepy in the least; and when we parted it was like the parting of old friends. My very dear ladies, I cherish the memory of that night. It was all too short.
I remember stopping at a fashionable hotel in Zurich, where I took an obscure corner and hoped to escape observation. I arrived in Paris with a five-pound note and a few coppers at half-past five or six in the morning. What was I to do? I found a restaurant and a waiter, looking very sleepy, sweeping out the place. I told him that I wanted change, and showed him the note. He took me to a den up ever so many stairs, where sat an Englishman of villainous aspect. He gave me a handful of French money, which he said was the equivalent of the note, less his commission. I daresay he was a perfectly honest man, but I could never understand how it was that, after taking breakfast at my restaurant and travelling second class by Dieppe to Portsmouth, I had only fourpence left out of my five-pound note.
I came back to Leamington to find trouble brewing. The governors of the college wanted to know when I was going to be ordained. By this time I had passed the voluntary theological examination at Cambridge, and had nothing more to do except to pass the Bishop’s examination. I put myself in communication with the Bishop’s secretary, and with great depression of spirits prepared myself for perjury, because by this time I understood that the white tie would choke me.
Then I heard that there were rumours among the governors. Somebody said that he feared—he was told—it was rumoured—that I was not sound on the Atonement. And day by day the truth was borne in upon me that I was not called and chosen for the office of deacon in the Church of England.
Christmas came. I was to be ordained in the spring; the Bishop had my name; my credentials had been sent to him. And then—oh! happiness!—a door of release was thrown open. My friend Ebden, then a junior in the Colonial College, came to see me. In his hand, so to speak, he held two colonial professorships. It seemed not improbable that I might have either of them if I chose. Then I should not have to take orders; then I should see something more of the world; then I should travel across the ocean. If I chose? Of course I chose. I jumped at the chance. I sent in my name. I was appointed. My choice was for the Mauritius, because the other place was in South Africa, and I don’t like snakes. So when I returned to Leamington it was to give in my resignation in three months, with the joy of feeling that I need not trouble the Bishop of Worcester—to whom I forgot to send an excuse—and that no one thenceforward would so much as ask whether I was sound on the Atonement.
It was a plunge; it was an escape. Whither I was going, what adventures I should meet with, how things would end, I knew not, nor did I ask myself. Why should one pry into the future? Though I could not suspect the fact, I was about to equip myself—with travel, with the society of all kinds of men, with the acquisition of things practical—for the real solid work of my life, which has been the observation of men and women, and the telling of stories about them.