Long after the railway was made which passed by Whitmore (within a long drive of Stoke), we continued to go in our own carriage, posting, to Shropshire. Gradually my mother consented to go in her own carriage, on a truck, by rail as far as Birmingham; farther she could not endure it. Later still, nearly the whole journey was effected by rail, but in our own chariot. At last we came to use the ordinary railway carriages, but then, for a long time, we used to have post-horses to meet us at some station near London: my mother would not be known to enter London in a railway carriage—"it was so excessively improper" (the sitting opposite strangers in the same carriage); so we entered the metropolis "by land," as it was called in those early days of railway travelling.
On returning to Lime in the spring of 1841, I was sent to Mr. Green's school, a commercial school at Windmill Hill, about a mile off. I used to ride to the school on my little pony "Gentle," much to the envy of the schoolboys; and in every way a most invidious distinction was made between me and them, which I daresay would have been thoroughly avenged upon me had I remained with them during play-hours; but I was only there from nine to twelve, doing my lessons at one of the great oak desks in the old-fashioned schoolroom. I chiefly remember of the school the abominable cases of favouritism that there were, and that if one of the ushers took a dislike to a boy, he was liable to be most unmercifully caned for faults for which another boy was scarcely reproved. In the autumn, when we went to Rockend, I was sent to another school at Torquay, a Mr. Walker's, where I was much more roughly handled, the master being a regular tartar. I remember a pleasant, handsome boy called Ray, who sat by me in school and helped me out of many a scrape, but Mr. Walker was very violent, and as he was not allowed to beat me as much as he did the other boys, he soon declined teaching me at all.
The railway from London to Brighton was now just opened, and we took advantage of it. As we reached Merstham (by the first morning train) the train stopped, and we were all made to get out, for the embankment had fallen in in front of us. It was pouring in torrents of rain, and the line muddy and slippery to a degree. We all had to climb the slippery bank through the yellow mud. I was separated from my mother and Lea and Uncle Julius, who was with us, but found them again in a desolate house, totally unfurnished, where all the passengers by the train were permitted to take refuge. It was the place whither I have gone in later days to visit Lord Hylton. Here we sat on the boarded floor, with very little food, in a great room looking upon some dripping portugal-laurels, all through the long weary day till four in the afternoon, when omnibuses arrived to take us to another station beyond the broken line. We did not reach Brighton till nine P.M., and when we arrived at the station and inquired after our carriages, which were to have met us at mid-day and taken us home, we heard that a bad accident had taken place; one of the horses had run away, one of the carriages been overturned down a steep bank, and one of the servants had his arm broken. We remained at Brighton in some anxiety till Monday, when we found that it was my uncle's horse "Steady" which had run away, and his faithful old servant Collins who was injured.
When my uncle was driving himself, these accidents were so frequent that we scarcely thought anything of them, as he drove so carelessly and talked vehemently or composed his sermons or charges all the way. But if the family had an accident on their way to church, they always returned thanks for their preservation, which made quite a little excitement in the service. I remember one occasion on which my mother and aunt did not appear as usual, when a note was handed to Uncle Julius as he came out of the vestry, upon which thanks were returned for the "merciful preservation of Lucy and Maria Hare and Staunton Collins" (the coachman)—and all the Rectory servants and all the Lime servants immediately walked out of church to look after the wounded or—because they were too excited to stay! The horse had taken fright at a gipsy encampment in the marsh lane and the family had been precipitated into the ditch.
At this time Uncle Julius had been made one of the Poor Law Guardians and had to visit at the workhouse, and there was the most ceaseless ferment and outcry against him. All sorts of stories were got up. One was that he was going to put all the children into a boat and take them out to sink them in Pevensey Bay! One day old Betty Lusted went up to the Rectory and asked to see the Archdeacon. He went out to her: "Well, Betty, and what do you want?"—"I want to know, zur, if you do know the Scripture."—"Well, Betty, I hope I do, but why do you ask?"—"Because if you do know the Scripture, how coomes it that you doona zee—'them whom God hath joined together let na man put asunder'?" (apropos of the separation of husbands and wives in the workhouse); and though she was a poor half-witted body, she brought the tears into his eyes. I remember his asking her daughter Polly once what she prayed for every night and morning. "Well, zur, I do pray for a new pair of shoes," replied Polly, without the slightest hesitation.
Uncle Julius would have given the world to have been able to talk easily and sympathetically to his people, but he could not get the words out. Sick people in the parish used to say, "The Archdeacon he do come to us, and he do sit by the bed and hold our hands, and he do growl a little, but he do zay nowt."
One day he heard that a family named Woodhams were in great affliction. It was just after poor Haydon had committed suicide, and he took down Wordsworth's sonnet on Haydon, and read it to them by way of comfort. Of course they had never heard of Haydon, and had not an idea what it was all about.[27]
It was on our way from Norwich to Stoke in the autumn of 1841 that I made my first sketch from nature. We slept at Bedford, to meet Charles Stanley there, and I drew Bedford Bridge out of the window—a view made by candlelight of a bridge seen by moonlight—but it was thought promising and I was encouraged to proceed. My mother, who drew admirably herself, gave me capital simple lessons, and in every way fostered my love of the picturesque. Indeed Hurstmonceaux itself did this, with its weird views across the levels to the faint blue downs, and its noble ruined castle. Of the stories connected with this castle I could never hear enough, and Uncle Julius told them delightfully. But the one I cared for most was of our remote ancestress Sybil Filiol, who lived at Old Court Manor in the reign of Edward II., I think. Uncle Julius used to describe how, after her marriage in Wartling Church, she went to take leave of her dead father's garden (before riding away upon a pillion behind her husband), and, whilst there, was carried off by gipsies. Her husband and other members of her family pursued them, but in those days locomotion was difficult, escape in the Cheviot Hills easy, and she was never heard of again.[28] How well I remember the pictorial description of a strange funeral seen approaching over the hills—"the gipsies of the north" bringing back the body of Sybil Filiol to be buried with her ancestors at Wartling, and the story of how her husband devoted her dowry to making "Sybil Filiol's Way," a sort of stone causeway to Hurstmonceaux Church, of which I delighted to trace the old grey stones near Boreham Street and in the Church Lane.
Our cousin Anna Maria Shipley, who had been cruelly married by her father against her will to the savage paralytic Mr. Dashwood, and who had been very many years a widow, had, in 1838, made a second marriage with an old neighbour, Mr. Jones, who, however, lived only a year. In 1840, she married as her third husband the Rev. George Chetwode, and died herself in the year following. Up to the time of her death, it was believed and generally understood that the heirs of her large fortune were the children of her cousin Francis,[29] but it was then discovered that two days before she expired, she had made a will in pencil in favour of Mr. Chetwode, leaving all she possessed in his power. This news was an additional shock to my father, who had never recovered the will of Mrs. Louisa Shipley, and he passed the winter of 1841 at Palermo in the utmost melancholy. When he first arrived, he gave a few dinners, but after that, says Victoire, he seemed to have a presentiment of his end, though the doctors declared that he was not dangerously ill. For several nights in February Félix sate up with him. Mr. Hare wished to send him to bed, "mais Félix repondit, 'Rappelez-vous, monsieur, que je suis ancien militaire, et que quand j'ai une consigne, je ne la quitte jamais;'" and then he opposed Félix no longer. "One morning at five o'clock A.M.," said Madame Victoire, "he asked Félix what o'clock it was. Félix told him. Then he said, 'Dans une demi-heure j'aurais mon