Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

LIFE AND LETTERS

OF

THOMAS THELLUSSON CARTER

CHAPTER I.

EARLY YEARS.

THE REV. Thomas Thellusson Carter, son of the Rev. Thomas Carter, for many years Vice-Provost of Eton, and of his wife, Mary, daughter of Henry Proctor, Esq., the younger son of a family long established at Clewer,1 was born at Eton on the nineteenth of March, 1808, in a house which still stands at the entrance to Keate's Lane. His father was at this time Lower Master, and it was perhaps for that reason, and also because of the misery suffered by an elder brother when sent to one of the rough preparatory schools of those days, that the child began his Eton life when just six years old. This was less strange than it now appears, for some day-boys from the town then came so young, that on winter evenings nursemaids might be seen waiting outside the archway of Lower School to take them safe home.

One of Mr. Carter's earliest recollections was of being led by his father up the school on his first entrance. Another is of the great assemblage in the year of Waterloo, when the Prince Regent received the allied sovereigns and their generals at Frogmore. The Eton boys were invited to

1 Mr. Carter was fond of telling how an ancestor, Henry Proctor, meeting Charles I. on his last journey to London, pulled off his hat to the royal prisoner, and was hustled into the ditch by the guards for so doing.

B

ETON.

attend, and his family were accustomed to relate how he was taken up and kissed by Blucher, as being one of the youngest boys who were present at that wonderful gathering.

Among the treasured mementoes of these early days, is a water-colour sketch by William Evans " of Eton," representing Thomas Thellusson Carter as he appeared at the Montem of probably 1817, a little fair, round-faced boy in a light-blue jacket and trousers, and blue cap with white ostrich-plumes.

The school was then in a state of indiscipline hard to realize, and Mr. Carter was still a small boy when the outbreak known as the Great Rebellion took place, and the Upper School was wrecked. He remembered seeing a brick thrown at the head of a master who was looking from his drawing-room window, half hidden by the blinds, at the tumult below. He remembered also the "bed of justice," when Dr. Keate, standing amid the ruins of his shattered desk, expelled the five ringleaders in the presence of the assembled school. Order was restored with a firm hand, but the standard of manners and life was still low. Bear-baiting and cockfights were among the tolerated amusements; quarrels were settled by savage fights in the playing-fields; in one instance with a fatal result. Religious teaching was represented by a curious institution called "Prose." On . Sunday afternoons the boys assembled in Upper School, and after an inaudible prayer, recited by one of the collegers, Dr. Keate read a portion of Blair's Sermons.

In T. T. Carter's early life, other and gentler influences predominated, for the twelve years of his school life were spent under his father's roof.

"This unbroken attachment to home, instead of a boy's usual separation from it, has, I have no doubt, had its effect on me," he wrote long afterwards. "Its loving care and thought for us all, one remembers with deepest thankful

ness.

Many still living can remember the Vice-Provost in his

venerable age, his kindly smile and ready sympathy, and the unfailing interest with which he watched the progress of his grandsons, as one after another they passed through Eton. They remember also Mrs. Carter's stately presence, her fine features and bright, beautiful eyes, her keen pleasure in travel and in all new and interesting sights, her delight in flowers, and the love of art which she inherited from her father and transmitted to more than one of her children.

Both parents did their utmost to make their house a truly happy home to their large family. They formed a bright, merry party, and "Tom" was the favourite with all. "He was the brother to whom we all looked," writes one of his five sisters, who still survives.

The home was the centre of a cheerful society; books of all kinds abounded; a small but choice collection of pictures, of which the foundation had been laid by Mr. Proctor, was formed year by year. As the young people grew up, tours to Wales and Scotland were planned for their holiday pleasure.

The journal of one of these tours, kept by their son at the age of seventeen, for the pleasure of his parents, is still treasured. It is written in a clear, delicate hand, very different from that familiar to his friends in later years, when the writer worked under pressure of a large correspondence, and was illustrated by a sister, who became an excellent amateur artist. This book shows that the love of beautiful scenery, which to the end of his life was one of Mr. Carter's chief delights, was already developed.

"Im

"The road, winding round the base of a hill, brought us to a most enchanting view," he writes of Loch Fyne. mediately beneath lay the lake, spreading to the right into a large bay. On the banks was the town of Inverary, looking like a fairy city, and on the right of which was the castle and the whole range of the park, terminated by the fine peak of Dunnachoich, clothed with wood; mountains rose in the background, and toward the left, till they were lost in mist. The lake was perfectly calm, and I never saw the

4

LOVE OF SCENERY.

reflection so beautiful. Every tree, every leaf, was entire, and the whole town seemed to sleep in the lake."

The Borrowdale mountains seen from Skiddaw at sunset "appeared like a sea of gold when stormy." The scenery of Derwentwater "is past all description. . . . The mixed splendour of the south end is excessive, and the dark clouds which alternately displayed and concealed it, rendered it still more beautiful." The journal abounds with passages such as these, showing a sensitive feeling for natural beauty not often seen in a boy so young.

He delighted not only in the scenery, but in the active exercise and rough and sometimes dangerous climbing necessary for the full enjoyment of a mountain country, and was gifted with a steady head and firm step, which he retained till far advanced in life. On one occasion he was caught by the sea near Whitby, and returned with unhopedfor speed to the anxious watchers, having climbed up the cliff, which the sailors had told his parents was impossible.

These household pleasures did not injure Mr. Carter's school life, or take him too much away from the society of his fellows. He played cricket and hockey, and was a proficient in fives, which in those days was played against the chapel wall, the deep buttresses of which formed the courts. Another favourite amusement was wood-turning, in which he was very skilful, and which he practised industriously, when the weather was too bad for outdoor games, at Rogerson's lathe. Of his studies, no record remains, but he took and kept a high place in the school, and left it Captain of Oppidans.

A letter from a young visitor, the sister of the Rev. William Oxenham, of Harrow, then lately married to his eldest sister, gives a pleasant glimpse of his family life at this time.

"Eton College, October 16, 1826.

"I have had so much to do and see here that I have L. and Tom and I drove to

had little leisure for writing..

...

Then

Sandpit Gate and saw the royal animals, and beauties they are! We first saw thirteen kangaroos hopping about in a paddock, then some lovely peacocks of all colours, then a pig deer, which is very pretty, notwithstanding its name. Mr. Lewis, a very interesting looking young artist, came out and took us into another paddock, where under a shed, overshadowed by fine oaks, stood his easel and a picture he was painting of the animals and their keeper, old Clarke, who was standing by with a Java deer, which was just sketched in. Close by was a shed, in which was a beautiful white stag from the Burman Empire, and in an adjoining paddock, also railed off, two extraordinary birds, called emus, as large as ostriches and more odd looking. . . . The whole was enchanting, quite like a fairy-tale. . . . I saw the cottage, but not the king, though Mr. Lewis said he was expecting him every moment. We could not wait, which I thought tantalizing to a degree, but they all indulge me in the slightest wish so much that I would not say I wished it, for I knew Tom wanted to be at home, as it was the day before he went. He was a great loss to our party; I think he has one of the most delightful dispositions I ever met with. L. is a dear girl, not the least like what I had imagined; in fact, they are all very engaging, and Mrs. Carter quite a mother to me. We had a delightful musical evening here on Friday; Venua played exquisitely on his violin, E. C." (probably the Rev. Edward Coleridge)" on the violoncello, and Mr. C. Yonge on his flute, L. on the harp, and E. on the pianoforte."

In 1826 Mr. Carter went to Christ Church. King's College, Cambridge, would have seemed his more probable destination, but for the fact that his place in the school was so high for his age, that in order to try for the scholarship he must have been placed in a lower form. This his father's tender pride would not suffer, and to this seeming accident he owed his Oxford training. Few details of his University life can now be gathered, for all those who shared it have passed away. No doubt many letters were exchanged between the boy and the home which he had never before quitted for more than a few weeks, but none have been preserved, except three boyish epistles to his sisters. One of these, written shortly after his arrival at Oxford, gives his first impressions of his new life.

« PredošláPokračovať »