And so it was with all our games and exercises, whether we were at football, wrestling, climbing, single-stick (which latter we were only allowed to practise in the presence of an old cavalry pensioner, who had served at Waterloo). He seemed to lay hold of whatever he put his hand to by the right end, and so the secret of it delivered itself up to him at once. One often meets with people who seem as if they had been born into the world with two left hands, and two left feet, and rarely with a few who have two right hands; and of these latter he was as striking an example as I have ever known. Often as a boy, and much oftener since, I have thought over this gift, trying to make out where the secret lay. For, though never very ambitious myself, I was more so than he was, and had the greatest wish to do every exercise and game as well as I possibly could; and by dint of real hard work, and years of practice, I did manage, in one or two instances, to reach the point which he had attained almost as it were by instinct. But I never could get nearer to his secret than this, that it lay in a sort of unconsciousness, which I believe to be natural courage. What I mean is, that what might possibly happen to himself never seemed to cross his mind: that he might get a fall and hurt himself, for instance, or get his head or his shins broken, or the like. And so, not being disturbed by any such considerations about himself, he had nothing to hinder him from just falling at once into the very best way of doing whatever he took in hand. Of course, even then, it required a fine body, as I have known boys and men, of equal natural courage, who were awkward and slow because they were very clumsily put together. But, on the other hand, I have known many men with equally fine bodies who never could get any decent work out of them. Now, with all the thinking in the world about it, I never could have acquired this natural gift; but, by having an example of it constantly before my eyes, I got the next best thing, which was a scorn of myself for feeling fear. This by degrees hardened into the habit of doing what I saw him do, and so I managed to pass through school and college without betraying the timidity of which I was ashamed.
Why do I make the confession now to you? Because I see the same differences in you that there were in us. One or two of you are naturally courageous, and the rest as naturally timid as I was. The first I hope will always bear with the others, and help them, as my brother helped me. If he had twitted me because I could not come under the trees at the rook-shooting, or because I was afraid of Moggy, I should probably never have felt the shame, or made the exertion, necessary to overcome my natural timidity. And to you who are not naturally courageous, I would say, make the effort to conquer your fear at once; you can’t begin too early, and will never be worth much till you have made it.
But there was another natural difference between us which deserves a few words, as it will bring out his character more clearly to you; and that was, that he was remarkably quiet and reserved, and shy with strangers, and I the reverse. When we came down to dessert, after a dinner party, and had to stand by our father’s side (as the custom was then in our parts), and say to each guest in turn, “Your good health, Sir, or Madam,” while we sipped a little sweet wine and water, the ceremony was a torture to him; while to me it was quite indifferent, and I was only running my eye over the dishes, and thinking which I should choose when it came to my turn. In looking over his earliest letters, I find in one, written to his mother a few weeks after we first went to school, this passage: “We are both very well and happy. I find that I like Tom better at school than I do at home, and yet I do not know the reason.” I was surprised for a moment when I came on this sentence. Of course, if love is genuine, the longer people know each other, the deeper it becomes; and therefore our friendship, like all others, grew richer and deeper as we got older. But this was the first time I ever had an idea that his feelings towards me changed after we went to school. I am not sure that I can give the reason any more than he could; but, on thinking it over, I daresay it had something to do with this difference I am speaking of.
I remember an old yeoman, a playfellow of our father’s, who lived in a grey gabled house of his own at the end of the village in those days, and with whom we used to spend a good deal of our spare time, saying to a lady, about her sons, “Bring ’em up sarcy (saucy), Marm! I likes to see bwoys brought up sarcy.” I have no doubt that he, and others, used to cultivate my natural gift of sauciness, and lead me on to give flippant answers, and talk nonsense. In fact, I can quite remember occasions of the kind, and George’s quiet steady look at them, as he thought, no doubt, “What a fool my brother is making of himself, and what a shame of you to encourage him!” Apart altogether from his shyness, he had too much self-command and courtesy himself to run into any danger of this kind.
Now, the moment we got to school, my sauciness abated very rapidly on the one hand, and, on the other, I became much more consciously beholden to him. We had scarcely been there a week when the first crisis occurred which made us both aware of this fact. My form had a lesson in early Greek History to get up, in which a part of the information communicated was, that Cadmus was the first man who “carried letters from Asia to Greece.” When we came to be examined, the master asked us, “What was Cadmus?” This way of putting it puzzled us all for a moment or two, when suddenly the words “carried letters” came into my head, and, remembering the man with the leather bag who used to bring my father’s papers and letters, and our marbles and whipcord, from Farringdon, I shouted, “A postman, Sir.” The master looked very angry for a moment, but, seeing my perfect good faith, and that I had jumped up expecting to go to the head of the form, he burst out laughing. Of course all the boys joined in, and when school was over I was christened Cadmus. That I probably should not have minded, but it soon shortened into “Cad,” at which all the blood in my eight-year-old veins was on fire. The more angry I was, the more some of the boys persecuted me with the hateful name; especially one stupid big fellow of twelve or so, who ought to have been two forms higher, and revenged himself for his place amongst us little ones by making our small lives as miserable as he could. A day or two after, with two or three boys for audience, he had got me in a corner of the playground, into which he kept thrusting me violently back, calling me “Cad, Cad,” while I was ready to fly at his throat and kill him. Suddenly we heard a step tearing down the gravel walk, and George, in his shirt sleeves, fresh from a game of rounders, rushed into the circle, and sent my tyrant staggering back with a blow in the chest, and then faced him with clenched fists, and a blaze in his eye, which I never saw there more than two or three times. I don’t think many boys, or men, would have liked to face him when it was there. At any rate my persecutor didn’t, though he must have been a stone heavier, and much stronger. So he slunk off, muttering to himself, to the disgust of the boys who hoped for a row, and I strutted out of my corner, while George went back to his rounders, after looking round and saying, “Just let me hear any of you call my brother ‘Cad’ again.” I don’t think I ever heard that nickname again at our first school, and it must have been very shortly after that he wrote home, “I find I like Tom better at school than I do at home, and yet I do not know the reason.” The strongest and most generous natures are always fondest of those who lean on them.
But I am getting on faster than I intended. We have not quite got away from home yet. And now let me turn again to my story. You will, I am sure, be interested by the following letter, which was written to us by Miss Edgeworth. You probably have never read her books; but in our day, when there were very few children’s books, they were our great delight, and almost the only ones we possessed, after “Robinson Crusoe,” “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” and “Sandford and Merton.” I forget how we discovered that the lady who wrote “Frank and Rosamond” was really alive, and that our grandmother actually had met her, and knew her.