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_ Ernest had heard awful accounts of Dr Skinner's temper, and of the
bullying which the younger boys at Roughborough had to put up with
at the hands of the bigger ones. He had now got about as much as he
could stand, and felt as though it must go hard with him if his
burdens of whatever kind were to be increased. He did not cry on
leaving home, but I am afraid he did on being told that he was
getting near Roughborough. His father and mother were with him,
having posted from home in their own carriage; Roughborough had as
yet no railway, and as it was only some forty miles from Battersby,
this was the easiest way of getting there.
On seeing him cry, his mother felt flattered and caressed him. She
said she knew he must feel very sad at leaving such a happy home,
and going among people who, though they would be very good to him,
could never, never be as good as his dear papa and she had been;
still, she was herself, if he only knew it, much more deserving of
pity than he was, for the parting was more painful to her than it
could possibly be to him, etc., and Ernest, on being told that his
tears were for grief at leaving home, took it all on trust, and did
not trouble to investigate the real cause of his tears. As they
approached Roughborough he pulled himself together, and was fairly
calm by the time he reached Dr Skinner's.
On their arrival they had luncheon with the Doctor and his wife, and
then Mrs Skinner took Christina over the bedrooms, and showed her
where her dear little boy was to sleep.
Whatever men may think about the study of man, women do really
believe the noblest study for womankind to be woman, and Christina
was too much engrossed with Mrs Skinner to pay much attention to
anything else; I daresay Mrs Skinner, too, was taking pretty
accurate stock of Christina. Christina was charmed, as indeed she
generally was with any new acquaintance, for she found in them (and
so must we all) something of the nature of a cross; as for Mrs
Skinner, I imagine she had seen too many Christinas to find much
regeneration in the sample now before her; I believe her private
opinion echoed the dictum of a well-known head-master who declared
that all parents were fools, but more especially mothers; she was,
however, all smiles and sweetness, and Christina devoured these
graciously as tributes paid more particularly to herself, and such
as no other mother would have been at all likely to have won.
In the meantime Theobald and Ernest were with Dr Skinner in his
library--the room where new boys were examined and old ones had up
for rebuke or chastisement. If the walls of that room could speak,
what an amount of blundering and capricious cruelty would they not
bear witness to!
Like all houses, Dr Skinner's had its peculiar smell. In this case
the prevailing odour was one of Russia leather, but along with it
there was a subordinate savour as of a chemist's shop. This came
from a small laboratory in one corner of the room--the possession of
which, together with the free chattery and smattery use of such
words as "carbonate," "hyposulphite," "phosphate," and "affinity,"
were enough to convince even the most sceptical that Dr Skinner had
a profound knowledge of chemistry.
I may say in passing that Dr Skinner had dabbled in a great many
other things as well as chemistry. He was a man of many small
knowledges, and each of them dangerous. I remember Alethea Pontifex
once said in her wicked way to me, that Dr Skinner put her in mind
of the Bourbon princes on their return from exile after the battle
of Waterloo, only that he was their exact converse; for whereas they
had learned nothing and forgotten nothing, Dr Skinner had learned
everything and forgotten everything. And this puts me in mind of
another of her wicked sayings about Dr Skinner. She told me one day
that he had the harmlessness of the serpent and the wisdom of the
dove.
But to return to Dr Skinner's library; over the chimney-piece there
was a Bishop's half length portrait of Dr Skinner himself, painted
by the elder Pickersgill, whose merit Dr Skinner had been among the
first to discern and foster. There were no other pictures in the
library, but in the dining-room there was a fine collection, which
the doctor had got together with his usual consummate taste. He
added to it largely in later life, and when it came to the hammer at
Christie's, as it did not long since, it was found to comprise many
of the latest and most matured works of Solomon Hart, O'Neil,
Charles Landseer, and more of our recent Academicians than I can at
the moment remember. There were thus brought together and exhibited
at one view many works which had attracted attention at the Academy
Exhibitions, and as to whose ultimate destiny there had been some
curiosity. The prices realised were disappointing to the executors,
but, then, these things are so much a matter of chance. An
unscrupulous writer in a well-known weekly paper had written the
collection down. Moreover there had been one or two large sales a
short time before Dr Skinner's, so that at this last there was
rather a panic, and a reaction against the high prices that had
ruled lately.
The table of the library was loaded with books many deep; MSS. of
all kinds were confusedly mixed up with them,--boys' exercises,
probably, and examination papers--but all littering untidily about.
The room in fact was as depressing from its slatternliness as from
its atmosphere of erudition. Theobald and Ernest as they entered
it, stumbled over a large hole in the Turkey carpet, and the dust
that rose showed how long it was since it had been taken up and
beaten. This, I should say, was no fault of Mrs Skinner's but was
due to the Doctor himself, who declared that if his papers were once
disturbed it would be the death of him. Near the window was a green
cage containing a pair of turtle doves, whose plaintive cooing added
to the melancholy of the place. The walls were covered with book
shelves from floor to ceiling, and on every shelf the books stood in
double rows. It was horrible. Prominent among the most prominent
upon the most prominent shelf were a series of splendidly bound
volumes entitled "Skinner's Works."
Boys are sadly apt to rush to conclusions, and Ernest believed that
Dr Skinner knew all the books in this terrible library, and that he,
if he were to be any good, should have to learn them too. His heart
fainted within him.
He was told to sit on a chair against the wall and did so, while Dr
Skinner talked to Theobald upon the topics of the day. He talked
about the Hampden Controversy then raging, and discoursed learnedly
about "Praemunire"; then he talked about the revolution which had
just broken out in Sicily, and rejoiced that the Pope had refused to
allow foreign troops to pass through his dominions in order to crush
it. Dr Skinner and the other masters took in the Times among them,
and Dr Skinner echoed the Times' leaders. In those days there were
no penny papers and Theobald only took in the Spectator--for he was
at that time on the Whig side in politics; besides this he used to
receive the Ecclesiastical Gazette once a month, but he saw no other
papers, and was amazed at the ease and fluency with which Dr Skinner
ran from subject to subject.
The Pope's action in the matter of the Sicilian revolution naturally
led the Doctor to the reforms which his Holiness had introduced into
his dominions, and he laughed consumedly over the joke which had not
long since appeared in Punch, to the effect that Pio "No, No,"
should rather have been named Pio "Yes, Yes," because, as the doctor
explained, he granted everything his subjects asked for. Anything
like a pun went straight to Dr Skinner's heart.
Then he went on to the matter of these reforms themselves. They
opened up a new era in the history of Christendom, and would have
such momentous and far-reaching consequences, that they might even
lead to a reconciliation between the Churches of England and Rome.
Dr Skinner had lately published a pamphlet upon this subject, which
had shown great learning, and had attacked the Church of Rome in a
way which did not promise much hope of reconciliation. He had
grounded his attack upon the letters A.M.D.G., which he had seen
outside a Roman Catholic chapel, and which of course stood for Ad
Mariam Dei Genetricem. Could anything be more idolatrous?
I am told, by the way, that I must have let my memory play me one of
the tricks it often does play me, when I said the Doctor proposed Ad
Mariam Dei Genetricem as the full harmonies, so to speak, which
should be constructed upon the bass A.M.D.G., for that this is bad
Latin, and that the doctor really harmonised the letters thus: Ave
Maria Dei Genetrix. No doubt the doctor did what was right in the
matter of Latinity--I have forgotten the little Latin I ever knew,
and am not going to look the matter up, but I believe the doctor
said Ad Mariam Dei Genetricem, and if so we may be sure that Ad
Mariam Dei Genetricem, is good enough Latin at any rate for
ecclesiastical purposes.
The reply of the local priest had not yet appeared, and Dr Skinner
was jubilant, but when the answer appeared, and it was solemnly
declared that A.M.D.G. stood for nothing more dangerous than Ad
Majorem Dei Gloriam, it was felt that though this subterfuge would
not succeed with any intelligent Englishman, still it was a pity Dr
Skinner had selected this particular point for his attack, for he
had to leave his enemy in possession of the field. When people are
left in possession of the field, spectators have an awkward habit of
thinking that their adversary does not dare to come to the scratch.
Dr Skinner was telling Theobald all about his pamphlet, and I doubt
whether this gentleman was much more comfortable than Ernest
himself. He was bored, for in his heart he hated Liberalism, though
he was ashamed to say so, and, as I have said, professed to be on
the Whig side. He did not want to be reconciled to the Church of
Rome; he wanted to make all Roman Catholics turn Protestants, and
could never understand why they would not do so; but the Doctor
talked in such a truly liberal spirit, and shut him up so sharply
when he tried to edge in a word or two, that he had to let him have
it all his own way, and this was not what he was accustomed to. He
was wondering how he could bring it to an end, when a diversion was
created by the discovery that Ernest had begun to cry--doubtless
through an intense but inarticulate sense of a boredom greater than
he could bear. He was evidently in a highly nervous state, and a
good deal upset by the excitement of the morning, Mrs Skinner
therefore, who came in with Christina at this juncture, proposed
that he should spend the afternoon with Mrs Jay, the matron, and not
be introduced to his young companions until the following morning.
His father and mother now bade him an affectionate farewell, and the
lad was handed over to Mrs Jay.
O schoolmasters--if any of you read this book--bear in mind when any
particularly timid drivelling urchin is brought by his papa into
your study, and you treat him with the contempt which he deserves,
and afterwards make his life a burden to him for years--bear in mind
that it is exactly in the disguise of such a boy as this that your
future chronicler will appear. Never see a wretched little heavy-
eyed mite sitting on the edge of a chair against your study wall
without saying to yourselves, "perhaps this boy is he who, if I am
not careful, will one day tell the world what manner of man I was."
If even two or three schoolmasters learn this lesson and remember
it, the preceding chapters will not have been written in vain. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXIX
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