________________________________________________
_ I will give no more of the details of my hero's earlier years.
Enough that he struggled through them, and at twelve years old knew
every page of his Latin and Greek Grammars by heart. He had read
the greater part of Virgil, Horace and Livy, and I do not know how
many Greek plays: he was proficient in arithmetic, knew the first
four books of Euclid thoroughly, and had a fair knowledge of French.
It was now time he went to school, and to school he was accordingly
to go, under the famous Dr Skinner of Roughborough.
Theobald had known Dr Skinner slightly at Cambridge. He had been a
burning and a shining light in every position he had filled from his
boyhood upwards. He was a very great genius. Everyone knew this;
they said, indeed, that he was one of the few people to whom the
word genius could be applied without exaggeration. Had he not taken
I don't know how many University Scholarships in his freshman's
year? Had he not been afterwards Senior Wrangler, First
Chancellor's Medallist and I do not know how many more things
besides? And then, he was such a wonderful speaker; at the Union
Debating Club he had been without a rival, and had, of course, been
president; his moral character,--a point on which so many geniuses
were weak--was absolutely irreproachable; foremost of all, however,
among his many great qualities, and perhaps more remarkable even
than his genius was what biographers have called "the simple-minded
and child-like earnestness of his character," an earnestness which
might be perceived by the solemnity with which he spoke even about
trifles. It is hardly necessary to say he was on the Liberal side
in politics.
His personal appearance was not particularly prepossessing. He was
about the middle height, portly, and had a couple of fierce grey
eyes, that flashed fire from beneath a pair of great bushy beetling
eyebrows and overawed all who came near him. It was in respect of
his personal appearance, however, that, if he was vulnerable at all,
his weak place was to be found. His hair when he was a young man
was red, but after he had taken his degree he had a brain fever
which caused him to have his head shaved; when he reappeared, he did
so wearing a wig, and one which was a good deal further off red than
his own hair had been. He not only had never discarded his wig, but
year by year it had edged itself a little more and a little more off
red, till by the time he was forty, there was not a trace of red
remaining, and his wig was brown.
When Dr Skinner was a very young man, hardly more than five-and-
twenty, the head-mastership of Roughborough Grammar School had
fallen vacant, and he had been unhesitatingly appointed. The result
justified the selection. Dr Skinner's pupils distinguished
themselves at whichever University they went to. He moulded their
minds after the model of his own, and stamped an impression upon
them which was indelible in after-life; whatever else a Roughborough
man might be, he was sure to make everyone feel that he was a God-
fearing earnest Christian and a Liberal, if not a Radical, in
politics. Some boys, of course, were incapable of appreciating the
beauty and loftiness of Dr Skinner's nature. Some such boys, alas!
there will be in every school; upon them Dr Skinner's hand was very
properly a heavy one. His hand was against them, and theirs against
him during the whole time of the connection between them. They not
only disliked him, but they hated all that he more especially
embodied, and throughout their lives disliked all that reminded them
of him. Such boys, however, were in a minority, the spirit of the
place being decidedly Skinnerian.
I once had the honour of playing a game of chess with this great
man. It was during the Christmas holidays, and I had come down to
Roughborough for a few days to see Alethea Pontifex (who was then
living there) on business. It was very gracious of him to take
notice of me, for if I was a light of literature at all it was of
the very lightest kind.
It is true that in the intervals of business I had written a good
deal, but my works had been almost exclusively for the stage, and
for those theatres that devoted themselves to extravaganza and
burlesque. I had written many pieces of this description, full of
puns and comic songs, and they had had a fair success, but my best
piece had been a treatment of English history during the Reformation
period, in the course of which I had introduced Cranmer, Sir Thomas
More, Henry the Eighth, Catherine of Arragon, and Thomas Cromwell
(in his youth better known as the Malleus Monachorum), and had made
them dance a break-down. I had also dramatised "The Pilgrim's
Progress" for a Christmas Pantomime, and made an important scene of
Vanity Fair, with Mr Greatheart, Apollyon, Christiana, Mercy, and
Hopeful as the principal characters. The orchestra played music
taken from Handel's best known works, but the time was a good deal
altered, and altogether the tunes were not exactly as Handel left
them. Mr Greatheart was very stout and he had a red nose; he wore a
capacious waistcoat, and a shirt with a huge frill down the middle
of the front. Hopeful was up to as much mischief as I could give
him; he wore the costume of a young swell of the period, and had a
cigar in his mouth which was continually going out.
Christiana did not wear much of anything: indeed it was said that
the dress which the Stage Manager had originally proposed for her
had been considered inadequate even by the Lord Chamberlain, but
this is not the case. With all these delinquencies upon my mind it
was natural that I should feel convinced of sin while playing chess
(which I hate) with the great Dr Skinner of Roughborough--the
historian of Athens and editor of Demosthenes. Dr Skinner,
moreover, was one of those who pride themselves on being able to set
people at their ease at once, and I had been sitting on the edge of
my chair all the evening. But I have always been very easily
overawed by a schoolmaster.
The game had been a long one, and at half-past nine, when supper
came in, we had each of us a few pieces remaining. "What will you
take for supper, Dr Skinner?" said Mrs Skinner in a silvery voice.
He made no answer for some time, but at last in a tone of almost
superhuman solemnity, he said, first, "Nothing," and then "Nothing
whatever."
By and by, however, I had a sense come over me as though I were
nearer the consummation of all things than I had ever yet been. The
room seemed to grow dark, as an expression came over Dr Skinner's
face, which showed that he was about to speak. The expression
gathered force, the room grew darker and darker. "Stay," he at
length added, and I felt that here at any rate was an end to a
suspense which was rapidly becoming unbearable. "Stay--I may
presently take a glass of cold water--and a small piece of bread and
butter."
As he said the word "butter" his voice sank to a hardly audible
whisper; then there was a sigh as though of relief when the sentence
was concluded, and the universe this time was safe.
Another ten minutes of solemn silence finished the game. The Doctor
rose briskly from his seat and placed himself at the supper table.
"Mrs Skinner," he exclaimed jauntily, "what are those mysterious-
looking objects surrounded by potatoes?"
"Those are oysters, Dr Skinner."
"Give me some, and give Overton some."
And so on till he had eaten a good plate of oysters, a scallop shell
of minced veal nicely browned, some apple tart, and a hunk of bread
and cheese. This was the small piece of bread and butter.
The cloth was now removed and tumblers with teaspoons in them, a
lemon or two and a jug of boiling water were placed upon the table.
Then the great man unbent. His face beamed.
"And what shall it be to drink?" he exclaimed persuasively. "Shall
it be brandy and water? No. It shall be gin and water. Gin is the
more wholesome liquor."
So gin it was, hot and stiff too.
Who can wonder at him or do anything but pity him? Was he not head-
master of Roughborough School? To whom had he owed money at any
time? Whose ox had he taken, whose ass had he taken, or whom had he
defrauded? What whisper had ever been breathed against his moral
character? If he had become rich it was by the most honourable of
all means--his literary attainments; over and above his great works
of scholarship, his "Meditations upon the Epistle and Character of
St Jude" had placed him among the most popular of English
theologians; it was so exhaustive that no one who bought it need
ever meditate upon the subject again--indeed it exhausted all who
had anything to do with it. He had made 5000 pounds by this work
alone, and would very likely make another 5000 pounds before he
died. A man who had done all this and wanted a piece of bread and
butter had a right to announce the fact with some pomp and
circumstance. Nor should his words be taken without searching for
what he used to call a "deeper and more hidden meaning." Those who
searched for this even in his lightest utterances would not be
without their reward. They would find that "bread and butter" was
Skinnerese for oyster-patties and apple tart, and "gin hot" the true
translation of water.
But independently of their money value, his works had made him a
lasting name in literature. So probably Gallio was under the
impression that his fame would rest upon the treatises on natural
history which we gather from Seneca that he compiled, and which for
aught we know may have contained a complete theory of evolution; but
the treatises are all gone and Gallio has become immortal for the
very last reason in the world that he expected, and for the very
last reason that would have flattered his vanity. He has become
immortal because he cared nothing about the most important movement
with which he was ever brought into connection (I wish people who
are in search of immortality would lay the lesson to heart and not
make so much noise about important movements), and so, if Dr Skinner
becomes immortal, it will probably be for some reason very different
from the one which he so fondly imagined.
Could it be expected to enter into the head of such a man as this
that in reality he was making his money by corrupting youth; that it
was his paid profession to make the worse appear the better reason
in the eyes of those who were too young and inexperienced to be able
to find him out; that he kept out of the sight of those whom he
professed to teach material points of the argument, for the
production of which they had a right to rely upon the honour of
anyone who made professions of sincerity; that he was a passionate
half-turkey-cock half-gander of a man whose sallow, bilious face and
hobble-gobble voice could scare the timid, but who would take to his
heels readily enough if he were met firmly; that his "Meditations on
St Jude," such as they were, were cribbed without acknowledgment,
and would have been beneath contempt if so many people did not
believe them to have been written honestly? Mrs Skinner might have
perhaps kept him a little more in his proper place if she had
thought it worth while to try, but she had enough to attend to in
looking after her household and seeing that the boys were well fed
and, if they were ill, properly looked after--which she took good
care they were. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXVIII
Read previous: CHAPTER XXVI
Table of content of Way of All Flesh
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
