UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA RANDOM REMINISCENCES CHAPTER I School report, 1870-Friends of my parents-Tennyson, Carlyle, A FEW days ago I found in a box of old letters a REVEREND SIR, '33, HEREFORD Square, S.W., 'Charlie, as his mark-book will have already shown you, has taken an exceedingly good position in his class this term. The distinct progress which I have been able to trace in Latin has been very gratifying. In French he is getting over what has always been to him his most serious difficulty—his ignorance of the grammar. As to English, there is a decided improvement in his spelling. For quickness in comprehending the general drift of a speech and the power of appropriately, easily, and neatly expressing himself he is unrivalled. In algebra and Greek he has worked steadily and made progress. I am sure that this result has not been gained by overwork; on the contrary, I think that if he were to show a little more emulation he would do much better. I shall arrange the marks so that next term three prizes may be fairly within his reach, and I hope he will feel that you are interested in the result. Polite, sensible, and clever, Charlie has always seemed to me a most agreeable companion. The only flaw which I can notice in his character consists in his want of self-assertion. However pleasant it may be for a master or for older boys to have a pupil or companion who never opposes his will to theirs, however amiable may be the conduct which arises from an unwillingness to hurt the feelings of others, still, for a boy's own good, I think it is well that he should be able to maintain his own convictions, even at the risk of being browbeaten or bullied. To the upright A LACK OF VENERATION 3 principles and tender feelings which Charlie already has, I should therefore like to see him add that resolute will which is the best safeguard against those evil influences and bad companions with which everyone, as he grows up, is bound to meet. 'I remain, reverend sir, 'Yours respectfully, 'G. HART. 'REV. W. H. BROOKFIELD.' Although as a child I was brought into contact with many celebrated people, friends of my father and mother-Carlyle, Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, and others I have, unfortunately, no interesting personal reminiscences of them. This may be partly due to the fact that I have a slight hollow just where I ought to have the bump of veneration. Thackeray-for whom, despite this phrenological shortcoming, I have an almost boundless admiration, partly inherited and partly cultivated—I could hardly be expected to remember, as he died when I was only six years old. Carlyle my father used to take me to see, but I can only recall an old man of rough exterior and primitive habits, seated on the floor by his fireplace, smoking a long straight clay pipe. I have visions of Tennyson drying his tobacco on the fire-shovel, and I have not forgotten the whiff which used to come from his larder, where the meat had to hang till it matured to his liking. I was reared, however, on stories of these giants from my parents, who knew them well, and some of these anecdotes have not, as far as I know, been hitherto published. My mother used to describe to me Tennyson's first appearance at Clevedon Court, whither my father brought him when quite a young man to present him to her family. My grandfather, Sir Charles Elton, who had fought in the trenches under the Duke of York, was a courtly old gentleman with a vast expanse of bald head, which sloped gradually into an eminence towards the poll. Immediately on entering the library in which my grandfather was sitting, the long-haired young poet marched up to him, and, without any warning, laid his palm upon the old gentleman's cranium, and, after gazing into his face for a few seconds with knitted brows, suddenly rolled forth in rugged Lincolnshire accents: 'You must have done a great many foolish things in your life, with this great big bump of benevolence of yours! In those days the elderly were not used to being patronized by the young, and I believe my grandfather was furious. Tennyson invited my great-uncle, Henry Hallam, to be godfather to his first boy, to which he readily consented. As they were walking up the church |