Chapter Chapter 27 · 第27章

. 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 by this work alone, and would very likely make

another £5000 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.