Memoir of a Brother E-Book

Thomas Hughes

• Herausgeber: Publisher s11838
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Memoir of a Brother written by Thomas Hughes who  was an English lawyer, judge, politician and author. This book was published in 1873. And now republish in ebook format. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy reading this book.

Leseprobe

Memoir of a Brother

By

Thomas Hughes

Table of Contents

PREFACE.

Dedication.

CHAPTER I. FIRST YEARS.

CHAPTER II. RUGBY.

CHAPTER III. A FATHER’S LETTERS.

CHAPTER IV. OXFORD.

CHAPTER V. DEGREE.

CHAPTER VI. START IN LIFE.

CHAPTER VII. 1849-50:—AN EPISODE.

CHAPTER VIII. ITALY.

CHAPTER IX. MIDDLE LIFE.

CHAPTER X. LETTERS TO HIS BOYS.

CHAPTER XI. CONCLUSION.

Engraved by C.H. Jeens from a Picture by G.F. Watts.

PREFACE.

This Memoir was written for, and at the request of, the near relatives, and intimate friends, of the home-loving country gentleman, whose unlooked-for death had made them all mourners indeed. Had it been meant originally for publication, it would have taken a very different form. In compiling it, my whole thoughts were fixed on my own sons and nephews, and not on the public. It tells of a life with which indeed the public has no concern in one sense; for my brother, with all his ability and power of different kinds, was one of the humblest and most retiring of men; who just did his own duty, and held his own tongue, without the slightest effort or wish for fame or notoriety of any kind. In another sense, however, I do see that it has a meaning and interest for Englishmen in general, and have therefore consented to its publication in the usual way, though not without a sense of discomfort and annoyance at having the veil even partially lifted from the intimacies of a private family circle. For, in a noisy and confused time like ours, it does seem to me that most of us have need to be reminded of, and will be the better for bearing in mind, the reserve of strength and power which lies quietly at the nation’s call, outside the whirl and din of public and fashionable life, and entirely ignored in the columns of the daily press. The subject of this memoir was only a good specimen of thousands of Englishmen of high culture, high courage, high principle, who are living their own quiet lives in every corner of the kingdom, from John o’ Groat’s to the Land’s-End, bringing up their families in the love of God and their neighbour, and keeping the atmosphere around them clean, and pure and strong, by their example,—men who would come to the front, and might be relied on, in any serious national crisis.

One is too apt to fancy, from the photographs of the nation’s life which one gets day by day, that the old ship has lost the ballast which has stood her in such good stead for a thousand years, and is rolling more and more helplessly, in a gale which shows no sign of abating, for her or any other national vessel, until at last she must roll over and founder. But it is not so. England is in less stress, and in better trim, than she has been in in many a stiffer gale.

The real fact is, that nations, and the families of which nations are composed, make no parade or fuss over that part of their affairs which is going right. National life depends on home life, and foreign critics are inclined to take the chronicles of our Divorce Court as a test by which to judge the standard of our home life, like the old gentleman who always spelt through the police reports to see “what the people were about.” An acquaintance, however, with any average English neighbourhood, or any dozen English families taken at random, ought to be sufficient to reassure the faint-hearted, and to satisfy them that (to use the good old formula) the Lord has much work yet for this nation to do, and the nation manliness and godliness enough left to do it all, notwithstanding superficial appearances.

A life without sensation or incident may therefore well form a more useful subject of study in such a time, than the most exciting narrative of adventure and success, the conditions being, that it shall have been truly lived, and faithfully told. Readers will judge for themselves whether the former condition has been fulfilled in this case: I wish I could feel the same confidence as to the latter. I can only say I have done my best.

T. H.

Dedication.

TO MY NEPHEWS AND SONS.

My dear Boys,

It has pleased God to take to Himself the head of the family of which you are members. Most of you are too young to enter into the full meaning of those words “family” and “membership,” but you all remember with sore hearts, and the deepest feeling of love and reverence, the gentle, strong, brave man, whom you used to call father or uncle; and who had that wonderful delight in, and attraction for, young folk, which most very gentle and brave men have. You are conscious, I know, that a great cold chasm has suddenly opened in your lives—that strength and help has gone away from you, to which you knew you might turn in any of the troubles which boys, and very young men, feel so keenly. Well, I am glad that you feel that it is so: I should not have much hope of you if it were otherwise. The chasm will close up, and you will learn, I trust and pray, where to go for strength and help, in this and all other troubles.

It is very little that I can do for you. Probably you can do more for me; and my need is even sorer than yours. But what I can do I will. Several of you have asked me questions about your father and uncle, what we used to do, and think and talk about, when he and I were boys together. Well, no one can answer these questions better than I, for we were as nearly of an age as brothers can be—I was only thirteen months younger—and we were companions from our childhood. We went together to our first school, when I was nearly eight and he nine years old; and then on to Rugby together; and were never separated for more than a week until he went to Oxford, where I followed a year later. For the first part of my time there, in college, we lived in the same rooms, always on the same staircase; and afterwards in the same lodgings. From that time to the day of his death we lived in the most constant intimacy and affection. Looking back over all those years, I can call to mind no single unkind, or unworthy, or untruthful, act or word of his; and amongst all the good influences for which I have to be thankful, I reckon the constant presence and example of his brave, generous, and manly life as one of the most powerful and ennobling. If I can in any measure reproduce it for you, I know that I shall be doing you a good service; and helping you, in even more difficult times than those in which we grew up, to quit yourselves as brave and true English boys and Englishmen, in whatever work or station God may be pleased to call you to.

You have all been taught to look to one life as your model, and to turn to Him who lived it on our earth, as to the guide, and friend, and helper, who alone can strengthen the feeble knees, and lift up the fainting heart. Just in so far as you cleave to that teaching, and follow that life, will you live your own faithfully. If I were not sure that what I am going to try to do for you would help to turn you more trustfully and lovingly to that source of all truth, all strength, all light, be sure I would not have undertaken it. As it is, I know it will be my fault if it does not do this.

THOMAS HUGHES.

CHAPTER I.FIRST YEARS.

My brother was born on the 18th of September, 1821 at Uffington, in Berkshire, of which your great-grandfather was vicar. Uffington was then a very primitive village, far away from any high road, and seven miles from Wantage, the nearest town from which a coach ran to London. There were very few neighbours, the roads were almost impassable for carriages in the winter, and the living was a poor one; but your great-grandfather (who was a Canon of St. Paul’s) had exchanged a much richer living for it, because his wife had been born there, and was deeply attached to the place. Three George Watts’s had been vicars of Uffington, in direct succession from father to son, and she was the daughter of the last of them. So your grandfather, who was their only child, came to live in the village on his marriage, in an old farmhouse close to the church, to which your grandfather added some rooms, so as to make it habitable. If you should ever make a pilgrimage to the place, you will not find the house, for it has been pulled down; but the grand old church is there, and White Horse Hill, rising just behind the village, just as they were half a century ago, when we first looked at them. We could see the church from our bed-room window, and the hill from our nursery, a queer upper room amongst the rafters, at the top of the old part of the house, with a dark closet in one corner, into which the nurses used to put us when we were more unruly than usual. Here we lived till your great-grandfather’s death, thirteen years later, when your grandfather removed to his house at Donnington.

The memories of our early childhood and boyhood throng upon me, so that I scarcely know where to begin, or what to leave out. I cannot, however, I am sure, go wrong in telling you, how I became first aware of a great difference between us, and of the effect the discovery had on me. In the spring of 1828, when he was seven and I six years old, our father and mother were away from home for a few days. We were, playing together in the garden, when the footman came up to us, the old single-barrelled gun over his shoulder which the gardener had for driving away birds from the strawberries, and asked us whether we shouldn’t like to go rook-shooting. We jumped at the offer, and trotted along by his side to the rookery, some 300 yards from the house. As we came up we saw a small group of our friends under the trees—the groom, the village schoolmaster, and a farmer or two—and started forwards to greet them. Just before we got to the trees, some of them began firing up at the young rooks. I remember, even now, the sudden sense of startled fear which came over me. My brother ran in at once under the trees, and was soon carrying about the powder-horn from one to another of the shooters. I tried to force myself to go up, but could not manage it. Presently he ran out to me, to get me to go back with him, but in vain. I could not overcome my first impression, and kept hovering round, at a distance of thirty or forty yards, until it was time for us to go back; ashamed of myself, and wondering in my small mind why it was that he could go in amongst that horrible flashing and smoke, and the din of firing, and cawing rooks, and falling birds, and I could not.

I had encountered the same puzzle in other ways already. Some time before my father had bought a small Shetland pony for us, Moggy by name, upon which we were to complete our own education in riding. We had already mastered the rudiments, under the care of our grandfather’s coachman. He had been in our family thirty years, and we were as fond of him as if he had been a relation. He had taught us to sit up and hold the bridle, while he led a quiet old cob up and down with a leading rein. But, now that Moggy was come, we were to make quite a new step in horsemanship. Our parents had a theory that boys must teach themselves, and that a saddle (except for propriety, when we rode to a neighbour’s house to carry a message, or had to appear otherwise in public) was a hindrance rather than a help. So, after our morning’s lessons, the coachman used to take us to the paddock in which Moggy lived, put her bridle on, and leave us to our own devices. I could see that that moment was, from the first, one of keen enjoyment to my brother. He would scramble up on her back, while she went on grazing—without caring to bring her to the elm stool in the corner of the field, which was our mounting place—pull her head up, kick his heels into her sides, and go scampering away round the paddock with the keenest delight. He was Moggy’s master from the first day, though she not unfrequently managed to get rid of him by sharp turns, or stopping dead short in her gallop. She knew it quite well; and, just as well, that she was mistress as soon as I was on her back. For weeks it never came to my turn without my wishing myself anywhere else. George would give me a lift up, and start her. She would trot a few yards, and then begin grazing, notwithstanding my timid expostulations, and gentle pullings at her bridle. Then he would run up, and pull up her head, and start her again, and she would bolt off with a flirt of her head, and never be content till I was safely on the grass. The moment that was effected she took to grazing again, and I believe enjoyed the whole performance as much as George, and certainly far more than I did. We always brought her a carrot, or bit of sugar, in our pockets, and she was much more like a great good-tempered dog with us than a pony.

Our first hunting experience now came off. Some staghounds—the King’s, if I remember rightly—came down for a day or two’s sport in our part of Berkshire, and a deer was to be turned out on the downs, a few miles from our house. Accordingly the coachman was to take us both. I was to go before him on one of the carriage horses, made safe by leather strap which encircled us both, while George rode Moggy. He was anxious to go unattached, but on the whole it was considered better that the coachman should hold a leading rein, as no one knew how Moggy might behave with the dogs, and no one but I knew how completely she would have to do as he chose. We arrived safely at the meet, saw the deer uncarted, the hounds laid on, and lumbered slowly after, till they swept away over a rise in the downs, and we saw them no more. So, after riding about for some time, the coachman produced some bread and cheese from his pocket, and we dismounted, and hitched up horse and pony on the leeward side of an old barn. We had not finished our lunch, when suddenly, to our intense delight, the stag cantered by within twenty yards of us, and, by the time we were on horseback again,the hunt followed. This time George and Moggy made the most desperate efforts for freedom, but the coachman managed to keep them in tow, and so the hunt went away from us again. I believe it was in consequence of George’s remonstrances when he got home that it was now settled he should be allowed to go to the next meet of the foxhounds in our neighbourhood without a leading rein. This is his account of that great event, in a letter to his grandmother, almost the first he ever wrote. Those of you who have been brought up in the country will see how respectfully he always treats the fox, always giving him a capital F when he mentions him.

“Uffington.

“Dear Grandmama,

“Your little dog Mustard sometimes teases the hawk by barking at him, and sometimes the hawk flies at Mustard. I have been out hunting upon our black pony, Moggy, and saw the Fox break cover, and the hounds follow after him. I rode fifteen miles. Papa brought me home the Fox’s lug. I went up a great hill to see the hounds drive the Fox out of the wood. I saw Ashdown Park House: there is a fine brass nob at the top of it. Tom and I send best love to you and grandpapa.

“I am, your affectionate grandson,

“George Hughes.”

On this first occasion, as you may see by the letter, your grandfather was out with him, and he had not been allowed to follow. But soon afterwards his great triumph occurred, at a meet to which he and Moggy went off one morning after breakfast, in the wildest spirits. Your grandfather did not go out that day; so one of the farmers who happened to be going was to give an eye to Master George, and see that he got into no trouble, and found his way home. This he did about three o’clock in the afternoon, bearing the brush in his hand, with his face all covered with blood, after the barbarous custom of those days. He had been in at the death; and the honest farmer recounted to us in the broadest Berkshire the wonders which he and Moggy had performed together; creeping through impossible holes in great fences, scrambling along ditches and up banks to the finish, when he had been singled out from outside the ring of horsemen and led up to the master, the late Lord Ducie, to be “blooded” by the huntsman, and receive the brush, the highest honour the boy foxhunter can achieve.

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.