I had enough of
that school and its discipline, so begged my parents not to send me there
again, after about 2 1/2 years. They acceded to my request, and as Mr Cork the
Baptist minister was opening a
school at Fleet, there I went and also my brother Sam. My two sisters Emily and
Annie, and my brother Luther went to boarding school at Basingstoke, [60] 2 stations on the railway S.W. about 11 miles distant, so
although we were a large family some of us were away some of the time. Two of
our schoolfellows, the Houghtons, kept rabbits and bred them; they had a good
outbuilding to keep them in. They also kept a cow and 2 ponies; also they cultivated
a few acres and raised crops - artichokes and clover for cows and horses, and
to see a cow after eating hay all winter eat a heap of clover fresh cut, is
quite a sight; they gulp it down, but of course it is regurgitated and chewed
again as cud.
My father sold
our pony and bought a wild one out of a Welsh herd, and we helped to break him
in, but he never was properly tamed until he fell down and cut his knees, and
that sobered him. But before that he would shy at anything, even a piece of
paper, and if we drove by the railway or shopped at the station [61] and a
train came along, he was hard to
hold. If we were by the side of the
railway and a train started him, he used to go
like the wind, and if the road was clear we let him.
An epidemic of
scarletina, a mild form of scarlet fever, came along and our school was closed.
My attack was very light, but my sister Emily had it badly, was light-headed
for 2 weeks; but finally it left me, so another school had to be found, and to
Tring (footnote 1) in Hertfordshire I was sent.
My father's friend Mr Grace of Ealing had 2 sons going to this
school, and that was how it came about. We went by train on the SW line to either
Waterloo or Clapham Junction, then
down to Brentford on the loop line, met there by cart and rode to Ealing; stayed the night, and on the
next day to Acton by the North London line to Willesden, on the
London & NW Railway by Harrow, Pinner, Bushey, Boxmoor, Watford etc to Tring Station, which was about 2
miles from [62] the town. I don't think there was even a bus ran, so get there
how you can; most people used to walk. This was the town where Mr Grace was
born, and his mother, brothers and sisters still lived there, so to his
mother's we went, and his boys, to their grandmas. She, the mother, although old still carried on the bakers
business left her by her husband when he died, and 2 sons now worked in the
business. So after a brief visit and perhaps a meal, on to Prospect House, to
make acquaintance with Mr Mark Young and his school of about 80 boarders and
about as many day boys.
It was a long
building, in fact 2 houses thrown into one, built sideways to the road with a
garden in the front and a driveway
beyond. There was a playground with swing boats and giants studs (footnote 2), also a 3-acre meadow, where we played cricket,
football etc., and also a large kitchen garden.
[63] This town had to my knowledge 6 Baptist chapels, in fact one clergyman of the State Church said that Baptists swarmed there like rabbits in a warren; I scarcely remember the population, but should say at that time would be 5,000 – and beside these there was the Episcopal or State Church. At that time no other denomination ventured in, not even the Methodists or Brethren. Tring Park was owned by the Rothschilds, and a part of the family lived there; there was a footpath through the Park, also a kind of deer was kept there. The water supply of the town was served from reservoirs, but later was piped from the Chiltern Hills direct, and the reservoirs were used for other purposes; some of us boys used to go and bathe in them – it was lovely and deep and clear; at other times we bathed in the Canal, which canal ran from somewhere in the Midlands to Paddington, and one branch went to Brentford and discharged into the Thames, [64] but I am anticipating and must first confine myself to Tring and the school.
Mr Young had been there a good many years, and most of the middle-aged men of the town had attended his school. There were besides a Mr Maul the usher, and 2 lesson teachers. I seemed to get on better at this school; I never had the cane there, and was held up by the master as a model pupil. I was talking to the master one day; the occasion was that in my composition on the horse, I had referred to the large Belgian horses used in the very hilly town of Guildford, and he wanted to know what I knew about Guildford – said his 2nd wife came from that town. Also, he had asked me why my father sent me to his school; I told him because I did not make such progress as my father thought I should in my studies; says he “Whose fault was that?” [65] to which I made no reply, but really the conditions were more congenial. He himself was a jovial Englishman, used to keep a horse and wagonette, and we boys often had an outing with him. We had a system of minutes saved up, for so many good marks for good work, and these minutes were very handy when any outings were taken – if we had a 2-hour drive that time was taken off our card, so we could not go on any more trips until we had earned the time.
One of the boys’ rules was that all newcomers sleep in their clothes box the first night; another was that every new boy was thrown into the water the first time he went to bathe; if you took it well, all right, but if not they would throw you in every time.
The drill sergeant came every now and then to drill us. Also we had a drum and pipe band, and on of the townsmen as bandmaster. [66] We used to be taken for long walks once a week by one of the masters, along the Chiltern Hills, and we could look down on the towns around for miles.
I was at this school in 1870-1 when the Franco-German war was fought, and I remember with what avidity we consumed the news, and what interest we took in every battle. As it is a matter of history I will not repeat the details, although some were very startling, e.g. McMahon surrendering with 180,000 men we thought was very bad, then Bezain surrendered with a similar number and it was comparatively soon over then for the French. Civil war ensued, a terrible time; Paris was starving, and the way out was by balloon; people ate rats, dogs, cats, and many starved. How relieved we all were when it was over.
Transcriber’s footnotes:
1. A few miles east of Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
2. I do not know what these were.
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