Читать книгу Memoirs of Eighty Years - Thomas Gordon Hake - Страница 20

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At school was laid the foundation of two lifelong friendships; one with Henry Edmondes, who afterwards was a barrister, and became deputy clerk of the peace for Middlesex during Sergeant Adams’s chairmanship—another with Hugh Worthington Statham, who proceeded to medicine, finally occupying the mastership of the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries. Edmondes was of short stature, with an intellect the better of which I have never known. He had all the humour of Charles Dickens, and, had he lived, might have proved a closer rival than Thackeray to that inimitable writer. He had advantages that Dickens never acquired; he was a scholar, well read in English, French, and Italian, as well as in classics, and was free from that silly sentimentalism which at times placed Dickens below par.

Statham, like myself, is still alive: never losing sight of the literæ humaniores, he threw his excellent abilities into the healing art, and touched the first place in his branch of the profession. Next to my brother, he is my oldest friend. Our first meeting must have been seventy years ago.[1]

I have not yet alluded to the King’s Ward, a sort of aristocratic section of the school, in which the boys were trained for the navy. Candidates were received into it at their own option. They formed a society apart, not associating with the other boys; consequently their deeds were traditional, relating to how in times past they had been in revolt, defying their masters, escaping from the school, and, after being retaken, how they were locked up in the prison cell and tamed on bread and water.

Their studies were under a mathematical master, apart from the other boys. They were distinguished by a metal badge with some emblem upon it, which was worn by them on the left shoulder.

They were always considered a very “gallous” set, which, in the school vocabulary, signified “daring.”

I preferred my solitary walks in the cloisters to joining in the games, and this secluded habit sometimes raised a faction against me, and I had only the choice left me of yielding or of being mobbed. There was a game in which some hundreds held on to each other by the tails of their coats, while the leader determined the direction they should take by going himself the way which pleased him. I was always a candidate for the leadership, and my plan was to drag the long chain of boys through segments of circles to left and back to right; the effect of this was, by a swift and sudden turn, to throw half the boys off their legs to the ground, the hinder ones coming in for the fall as the impetus given by the foremost reached them.

It appears remarkable, at first thought, that with so many hundreds one should learn the name of every boy; but it is nothing compared with what is achieved by study. Some forty years ago I had a conversation with Professor Henslow, of Cambridge, on the subject of getting names by heart. At that time there were sixty thousand plants classified. He said that a botanist would by degrees fix all these names on his memory without any effort.

A memorable group among us was that of three brothers named Leighton, a family of such beauty as can only be rarely seen. Two of them were Grecians. The eldest, James Leighton, was tall, with dark hair and complexion, and of a graceful figure. He proceeded to the university early in my time, so I saw little of him, but that little has lasted my memory for seventy years. David Leighton came next; he was of a fair complexion, with large grey eyes, with nose and lips exquisitely curved, and a countenance expressive of talent and good nature.

The Grecians might reach their twentieth year at the school, and, as men, had the advantage of their dress being made of fine cloth; it was otherwise the same as that of the boys, except that they had broad red girdles, stamped like those of the monitors. In such dress the Grecians had a truly noble appearance; one might think of them as high officials at the court of Edward the Sixth.

The youngest of the group was Frederick Leighton, my junior, and my particular friend. He had dark and refined features, with curling hair.

I met David Leighton again at Baden Baden in 1832, among the fashionable crowds from all nations. He was chaplain to the English residents of the place. I have heard nothing more of this fine family from that time to this.

I asked him what he had done at Cambridge. His answer was, that he had disgusted his whole family.

Another contemporary, one who made some figure in professional life, was Lawson Cape. As a boy he was the greediest of readers. His father brought him historical works week after week, and he devoured their contents as fast as they reached him. He was short, fair-haired, freckled, quick at reading, quick at learning, quick at looking about him. It was difficult to follow his movements, so excited were they on all occasions. I met him again at Florence, during the carnival. I saw him abroad once more at Baden Baden, after which he settled in London as an accoucheur, when I came across him for the last time.

He was related to Sir Charles Locock, and through his influence acquired an obstetric practice in town.

[1] He died at the beginning of 1892, after entering his eighty-fourth year. He was two months my senior. I have later on made a distinction between early friends and later ones, dwelling on the fact that what happens to us before we have attained our full growth is nourished as a part of us, and so becomes ingrained in our natures.