Then, after a few moments of
breathless
hush on the bank, the
last gun is fired and they are off.
last gun is fired and they are off.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
They began commonly
## p. 7691 (#505) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7691
with some purpose or destination, and ended by losing me in the
intricacies of the narrowest, crookedest, and most inconsequent
little streets in the world, or left me cast away upon the un-
familiar waters of some canal as far as possible from the point
aimed at. Dark and secret little courts lay in wait for my blun-
dering steps, and I was incessantly surprised and brought to sur-
render by paths that beguiled me up to dead walls or the sudden
brinks of canals. The wide and open squares before the innu-
merable churches of the city were equally victorious, and contin-
ually took me prisoner. But all places had something rare and
worthy to be seen: if not loveliness of sculpture or architecture,
at least interesting squalor and picturesque wretchedness; and I
believe I had less delight in proper Objects of Interest than in
the dirty neighborhoods that reeked with unwholesome winter
damps below, and peered curiously out with frowzy heads and
beautiful eyes from the high, heavy-shuttered casements above.
Every court had its carven well to show me, in the noisy keep-
ing of the water-carriers and the slatternly, statuesque gossips of
the place. The remote and noisome canals were pathetic with
empty old palaces peopled by herds of poor, that decorated the
sculptured balconies with the tatters of epicene linen, and patched
the lofty windows with obsolete hats.
I found the night as full of beauty as the day, when caprice
led me from the brilliancy of St. Mark's and the glittering streets
of shops that branch away from the Piazza, and lost me in the
quaint recesses of the courts, or the tangles of the distant alleys,
where the dull little oil lamps vied with the tapers burning before
the street-corner shrines of the Virgin in making the way ob-
scure, and deepening the shadows about the doorways and under
the frequent arches. I remember distinctly among the beautiful
nights of that time, the soft night of late winter which first
showed me the scene you may behold from the Public Gardens
at the end of the long concave line of the Riva degli Schiavoni.
Lounging there upon the southern parapet of the Gardens, I
turned from the dim bell-towers of the evanescent islands in
the east (a solitary gondola gliding across the calm of the water,
and striking its moonlight silver into multitudinous ripples), and
glanced athwart the vague shipping in the basin of St. Mark,
and saw all the lights from the Piazzetta to the Giudecca, mak-
ing a crescent of flame in the air, and casting deep into the
water under them a crimson glory that sank also down and down
## p. 7692 (#506) ###########################################
7692
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
in my own heart, and illumined all its memories of beauty and
delight. Behind these lamps rose the shadowy masses of church
and palace; the moon stood bright and full in the heavens; the
gondola drifted away to the northward; the islands of the lagoons
seemed to rise and sink with the light palpitations of the waves
like pictures on the undulating fields of banners; the stark rig-
ging of a ship showed black against the sky; the Lido sank from
sight upon the east, as if the shore had composed itself to sleep
by the side of its beloved sea to the music of the surge that
gently beat its sands; the yet leafless boughs of the trees above
me stirred themselves together, and out of one of those trem-
bling towers in the lagoons one rich full sob burst from the
heart of a bell, too deeply stricken with the glory of the scene,
and suffused the languid night with the murmur of luxurious,
ineffable sadness.
But there is a perfect democracy in the realm of the beautiful,
and whatsoever pleases is equal to any other thing there, no
matter how low its origin or humble its composition; and the
magnificence of that moonlight scene gave me no deeper joy than
I won from the fine spectacle of an old man whom I saw burn-
ing coffee one night in the little court behind my lodgings, and
whom I recollect now as one of the most interesting people I
saw in my first days at Venice. All day long the air of that
neighborhood had reeked with the odors of the fragrant berry,
and all day long this patient old man-sage, let me call him—
had turned the sheet-iron cylinder in which it was roasting over
an open fire, after the picturesque fashion of roasting coffee in
Venice. Now that the night had fallen, and the stars shone
down upon him, and the red of the flame luridly illumined him,
he showed more grand and venerable than ever. Simple, abstract
humanity has its own grandeur in Italy; and it is not hard here
for the artist to find the primitive types with which genius loves
best to deal. As for this old man, he had the beard of a saint
and the dignity of a senator, harmonized with the squalor of a
beggar, superior to which shone his abstract, unconscious grandeur
of humanity. A vast and calm melancholy, which had nothing to
do with burning coffee, dwelt in his aspect and attitude; and if
he had been some dread supernatural agency, turning the wheel
of fortune, and doing men instead of coffee brown, he could not
have looked more sadly and weirdly impressive. When presently
he rose from his seat and lifted the cylinder from its place, and
## p. 7693 (#507) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7693
the clinging flames leaped after it, and he shook it, and a
volume of luminous smoke enveloped him and glorified him,—
then I felt with secret anguish that he was beyond art, and
turned sadly from the spectacle of that sublime and hopeless
magnificence.
At other times (but this was in broad daylight) I was troubled
by the æsthetic perfection of a certain ruffian boy, who sold cakes.
of baked Indian meal to the soldiers in the military station near
the Piazza, and whom I often noted from the windows of the
little caffè there, where you get an excellent caffè bianco (coffee
with milk) for ten soldi and one to the waiter. I have reason to
fear that this boy dealt over-shrewdly with the Austrians, for a
pitiless war raged between him and one of the sergeants.
His
hair was dark, his cheek was of a bronze better than olive; and
he wore a brave cap of red flannel, drawn down to eyes of lus-
trous black. For the rest, he gave unity and coherence to a
jacket and pantaloons of heterogeneous elements, and, such was
the elasticity of his spirit, a buoyant grace to feet incased in
wooden shoes. Habitually came a barrel-organist and ground
before the barracks, and
"Took the soul
Of that waste place with joy";
and ever, when this organist came to a certain lively waltz, and
threw his whole soul as it were into the crank of his instru-
ment, my beloved ragamuffin failed not to seize another cake-boy
in his arms, and thus embraced, to whirl through a wild inspira-
tion of figures, in which there was something grotesquely rhyth-
mic, something of indescribable barbaric magnificence, spiritualized
into a grace of movement superior to the energy of the North and
the extravagant fervor of the East. It was coffee and not wine
that I drank; but I fable all the same that I saw reflected in
this superb and artistic superation of the difficulties of dancing
in that unfriendly foot-gear, something of the same genius that
combated and vanquished the elements, to build its home upon
sea-washed sands in marble structures of airy and stately splen-
dor, and gave to architecture new glories full of eternal surprise.
So, I say, I grew early into sympathy and friendship with
Venice; and being newly from a land where everything, mor-
ally and materially, was in good repair, I rioted sentimentally on
the picturesque ruin, the pleasant discomfort and hopelessness of
## p. 7694 (#508) ###########################################
7694
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
everything about me here. It was not yet the season to behold
all the delight of the lazy outdoor life of the place; but never-
theless I could not help seeing that great part of the people,
both rich and poor, seemed to have nothing to do, and that
nobody seemed to be driven by any inward or outward impulse.
When however I ceased (as I must in time) to be merely a
spectator of this idleness, and learned that I too must assume my
share of the common indolence, I found it a grievous burden.
Old habits of work, old habits of hope, made my endless leisure
irksome to me, and almost intolerable when I ascertained, fairly
and finally, that in my desire to fulfill long-cherished but after
all merely general designs of literary study, I had forsaken
wholesome struggle in the currents where I felt the motion of
the age, only to drift into a lifeless eddy of the world, remote
from incentive and sensation.
For such is Venice; and the will must be strong and the faith
indomitable in him who can long retain, amid the influences of
her stagnant quiet, a practical belief in God's purpose of a great
moving, anxious, toiling, aspiring world outside. When you have
yielded, as after a while I yielded, to these influences, a gentle
incredulity possesses you; and if you consent that such a thing is
as earnest and useful life, you cannot help wondering why it
need be. The charm of the place sweetens your temper, but cor-
rupts you; and I found it a sad condition of my perception of the
beauty of Venice and friendship with it, that I came in some
unconscious way to regard her fate as my own; and when I
began to write the sketches which go to form this book, it was
as hard to speak of any ugliness in her, or of the doom written
against her in the hieroglyphic seams and fissures of her crum-
bling masonry, as if the fault and penalty were mine. I do not
so greatly blame, therefore, the writers who have committed so
many sins of omission concerning her, and made her all light,
color, canals, and palaces. One's conscience, more or less un-
comfortably vigilant elsewhere, drowses here, and it is difficult
to remember that fact is more virtuous than fiction. In other
years, when there was life in the city, and this sad ebb of
prosperity was full tide in her canals, there might have been
some incentive to keep one's thoughts and words from lapsing
into habits of luxurious dishonesty, some reason for telling the
whole hard truth of things, some policy to serve, some end to
gain. But now, what matter?
## p. 7695 (#509) ###########################################
7695
YOG
THOMAS HUGHES
(1823-1896)
HE early life of Thomas Hughes was that of the typical Eng-
lish school lad; and luckily he had the genius to express in
literature the daily incidents of that life, with a freshness of
sympathy, a vigorous manliness, and a moral insight that make his
stories a revelation of boy nature. He was the son of the vicar of
Uffington in Berkshire, where he was born in 1823; and in this first
home he learned to love the English country, and to understand vil-
lage and rustic nature. At seven he was sent away to school, and
was only ten when he went to Rugby. He
has disclaimed identity with his hero, but
Tom Brown' is certainly a product of his
personal impressions; and to his stay at
Rugby we owe the vivid presentation of Dr.
Arnold's noble figure, and the loving por-
trayal of his influence in the great public
school. From Rugby Thomas Hughes went
to Oxford, and later he studied law at Lin-
coln's Inn. He was called to the Bar of the
Inner Temple in 1848, and began practice
at once.
Throughout his long public career, as
advanced Liberal in Parliament, as founder
with Frederick Maurice of the Christian So-
cialists, as creator of Rugby, a socialistic community in the mountains
of Tennessee, he tried most earnestly to exercise a helpful influence
apon English working-people. To him right living, which he sought
to inculcate, was the object of life; and the stimulus most needed, an
appeal to moral courage.
He was a man of strong convictions on one side or the other of a
question. At the outbreak of our Civil War, his bold advocacy of the
abolition of slavery riveted a lasting friendship with James Russell
Lowell.
THOMAS HUGHES
In his early manhood Thomas Hughes essayed journalism. He
wrote many sketches for the London Spectator,-chiefly accounts of
traveling experiences, and he thus defrayed the cost of many little.
Continental jaunts. These sketches served as his apprenticeship in
## p. 7696 (#510) ###########################################
7696
THOMAS HUGHES
writing, and long afterward they were collected in book form with
the title Vacation Rambles. ' But authorship was a secondary inter-
est until it occurred to him to write a story for his sons and nephews;
and Tom Brown's School Days,' first appearing in 1857, made him
famous.
Two years later The Scouring of the White Horse,' a
spirited account of a vacation trip, had a respectful although less cor-
dial reception. The great success of the first story led Mr. Hughes
to continue his hero's career with Tom Brown at Oxford,' which
was first published as a serial in Macmillan's Magazine. This second
volume, which is much the longer, although often fine and spirited
sometimes waxes prolix, and has never been so popular as the earlier
story.
Judge Hughes's other writings include several memoirs and bi-
ographies, notably the 'Memoir of a Brother,' and that of Kingsley;
books of religious import, like The Manliness of Christ'; a sketch of
'Rugby, Tennessee,' and various miscellanies. But the bulk of his
literary work sinks into insignificance when set beside the peerless
boy's-book which brought him fame.
"I hate the idea of being presented in any guise to any public,»
he once wrote. His best work was not written for fame, but in the
earnest desire to offer helpful advice as strongly and straightforwardly
as possible. That his purpose was avowedly didactic did not lessen
his popularity; for the preaching is so wise and kindly that, as he
himself desired, it seemed to come from a big boy's impulse to help
the less experienced.
THE BOAT RACE
From Tom Brown at Oxford'
ATURDAY night came, and brought with it a most useful though
unpalatable lesson to the St. - Ambrosians. The Oriel boat
was manned chiefly by old oars, seasoned in many a race,
and not liable to panic when hard pressed. They had a fair
though not a first-rate stroke, and a good coxswain: experts re-
marked that they were rather too heavy for their boat, and that
she dipped a little when they put on anything like a severe spurt;
but on the whole they were by no means the sort of crew you
could just run into hand over hand. So Miller and Diogenes
preached, and so the Ambrosians found out to their cost.
They had the pace of the other boat, and gained as usual a
boat's-length before the Gut: but first those two fatal corners
were passed, and then other well-remembered spots where former
## p. 7697 (#511) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7697
bumps had been made, and still Miller made no sign; on the
contrary, he looked gloomy and savage. The St. -Ambrosian shouts
from the shore, too, changed from the usual exultant peals into
something like a quiver of consternation, while the air was rent
with the name and laudations of "Little Oriel. "
Long before the Cherwell, Drysdale was completely baked (he
had played truant the day before and dined at the Weirs, where
he had imbibed much dubious hock), but he from old habit man-
aged to keep time. Tom and the other young oars got flurried,
and quickened; the boat dragged, there was no life left in her;
and though they managed just to hold their first advantage, could
not put her a foot nearer the stern of the Oriel boat, which
glided past the winning-post a clear boat's-length ahead of her
pursuers, and with a crew much less distressed.
Such races must tell on strokes; and even Jervis, who had
pulled magnificently throughout, was very much done at the close,
and leaned over his oar with a swimming in his head and an
approach to faintness, and was scarcely able to see for a minute
or so. Miller's indignation knew no bounds, but he bottled it up
till he had manoeuvred the crew into their dressing-room by
themselves, Jervis having stopped below. Then he let out, and
did not spare them. "They would kill their captain, whose little
finger was worth the whole of them; they were disgracing the
college; three or four of them had neither heart nor head nor
pluck. "
They all felt that this was unjust; for after all, had they
not brought the boat up to the second place? Poor Diogenes
sat in a corner and groaned; he forgot to prefix "old fellow"
to the few observations he made. Blake had great difficulty in
adjusting his necktie before the glass; he merely remarked in a
pause of the objurgation, "In faith, coxswain, these be very bitter
words. »
Tom and most of the others were too much out of heart to
resist; but at last Drysdale fired up: -
"You've no right to be so savage, that I can see," he said,
stopping the low whistle suddenly in which he was indulging, as
he sat on the corner of the table. "You seem to think No. 2 the
weakest out of several weak places in the boat. "
"Yes, I do," said Miller.
"Then this honorable member," said Drysdale, getting off the
table, "seeing that his humble efforts are unappreciated, thinks it
XIII-482
## p. 7698 (#512) ###########################################
7698
THOMAS HUGHES
best for the public service to place his resignation in the hands
of your Coxswainship. "
«< Which my Coxswainship is graciously pleased to accept,"
replied Miller.
"Hurrah for a roomy punt and a soft cushion next racing
night! It's almost worth while to have been rowing all this
time, to realize the sensations I shall feel when I see you fellows
passing the Cherwell on Tuesday. "
"Suave est, it's what I'm partial to, mari magno, in the last
reach, a terra, from the towing-path, alterius magnum spectare
laborem, to witness the tortures of you wretched beggars in the
boat. I'm obliged to translate for Drysdale, who never learned
Latin," said Blake, finishing his tie and turning to the company.
There was an awkward silence. Miller was chafing inwardly,
and running over in his mind what was to be done; and nobody
else seemed quite to know what ought to happen next, when the
door opened and Jervis came in.
"Congratulate me, my captain," said Drysdale: "I'm well out
of it at last. "
Jervis pished and pshawed a little at hearing what had hap-
pened, but his presence acted like oil on the waters. The moment
that the resignation was named, Tom's thoughts had turned to
Hardy. Now was the time: he had such confidence in the man,
that the idea of getting him in for the next race entirely changed
the aspect of affairs to him, and made him feel as "bumptious"
again as he had done in the morning. So with this idea in his
head, he hung about till the captain had made his toilet, and
joined himself to him and Miller as they walked up.
"Well, what are we to do now? " said the captain.
"That's just what you have to settle," said Miller: "you
have been up all the term, and know the men's pulling better
than I. "
"I suppose we must press somebody from the torpid. Let
me see, there's Burton. "
"He rolls like a porpoise," interrupted Miller positively:
"impossible. "
"Stewart might do, then. "
"Never kept time for three strokes in his life," said Miller.
"Well, there are no better men," said the captain.
<< Then we may lay our account to stopping where we are, if
we don't even lose a place," said Miller.
## p. 7699 (#513) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7699
"Dust unto dust; what must be, must;
If you can't get crumb, you'd best eat crust,"
-
said the captain.
"It's all very well talking coolly now," said Miller; "but you'll
kill yourself trying to bump, and there are three more nights. "
"Hardy would row if you asked him, I'm sure," said Tom.
The captain looked at Miller, who shook his head. "I don't
think it," he said: "I take him to be a shy bird that won't come
to everybody's whistle. We might have had him two years ago,
I believe I wish we had. "
"I always told you so," said Jervis; "at any rate, let's try
him. He can but say no, and I don't think he will; for you see
he has been at the starting-place every night, and as keen as a
freshman all the time. >>>
"I'm sure he won't," said Tom: "I know he would give any-
thing to pull. "
"You had better go to his rooms and sound him," said the
captain; "Miller and I will follow in half an hour. " We have
already heard how Tom's mission prospered.
The next day, at a few minutes before two o'clock, the St.
Ambrose crew, including Hardy, with Miller (who was a desperate
and indefatigable pedestrian) for leader, crossed Magdalen Bridge.
At five they returned to college, having done a little over fifteen
miles, fair heel-and-toe walking, in the interval. The afternoon
had been very hot, and Miller chuckled to the captain, "I don't
think there will be much trash left in any of them after that.
That fellow Hardy is as fine as a race-horse; and did you see, he
never turned a hair all the way. "
The crew dispersed to their rooms, delighted with the per-
formance now that it was over, and feeling that they were much
the better for it, though they all declared it had been harder
work than any race they had yet pulled. It would have done a
trainer's heart good to have seen them, some twenty minutes
afterward, dropping into hall (where they were allowed to dine.
on Sundays, on the joint), fresh from cold baths, and looking
ruddy and clear, and hard enough for anything.
Again on Monday, not a chance was lost. The St. Ambrose
boat started soon after one o'clock for Abingdon. They swung
steadily down the whole way, and back again to Sandford without
a single spurt; Miller generally standing in the stern, and preach-
ing above all things steadiness and time. From Sandford up
## p. 7700 (#514) ###########################################
7700
THOMAS HUGHES
they were accompanied by half a dozen men or so, who ran up
the bank watching them. The struggle for the first place on the
river was creating great excitement in the rowing world; and
these were some of the most keen connoisseurs, who, having
heard that St. Ambrose had changed a man, were on the lookout
to satisfy themselves as to how it would work. The general
opinion was veering round in favor of Oriel: changes so late in
the races, and at such a critical moment, were looked upon as
very damaging.
Foremost among the runners on the bank was a wiry dark
man, with sanguine complexion, who went with a peculiar long
low stride, keeping his keen eye well on the boat. Just above
Kennington Island, Jervis, noticing this particular spectator for
the first time, called on the crew, and quickening his stroke, took
them up the reach at racing pace. As they lay in Iffley Lock
the dark man appeared above them, and exchanged a few words
and a good deal of dumb show with the captain and Miller, and
then disappeared.
From Iffley up they went steadily again. On the whole,
Miller seemed to be in very good spirits in the dressing-room:
he thought the boat trimmed better and went better than she
had ever done before, and complimented Blake particularly for
the ease with which he had changed sides. They all went up
in high spirits, calling on their way at "The Choughs" for one
glass of old ale round, which Miller was graciously pleased to
allow. Tom never remembered till after they were out again
that Hardy had never been there before, and felt embarrassed
for a moment; but it soon passed off. A moderate dinner and
early to bed finished the day; and Miller was justified in his
parting remark to the captain: "Well, if we don't win we can
comfort ourselves that we haven't dropped a stitch this last two
days, at any rate. "
Then the eventful day arose which Tom and many another
man felt was to make or mar St. Ambrose. It was a glorious
early summer day, without a cloud, scarcely a breath of air stir-
ring. "We shall have a fair start, at any rate," was the general
feeling. We have already seen what a throat-drying, nervous
business the morning and afternoon of a race day is, and must
not go over the same ground more than we can help; so we will
imagine the St. Ambrose boat down at the starting-place, lying
close to the towing-path, just before the first gun.
## p. 7701 (#515) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7701
There is a much greater crowd than usual opposite the two
first boats. By this time most of the other boats have found
their places, for there is not much chance of anything very excit
ing down below; so, besides the men of Oriel and St. Ambrose
(who muster to-night of all sorts, the fastest of the fast and
slowest of the slow having been by this time shamed into some-
thing like enthusiasm), many of other colleges, whose boats have
no chance of bumping or being bumped, flock to the point of
attraction.
"Do you make out what the change is? " says a backer of
Oriel to his friend in the like predicament.
"Yes: they've got a new No. 5, don't you see? and by
George, I don't like his looks," answered his friend: "awfully
long and strong in the arm, and well ribbed up. A devilish
awkward customer. I shall go and try to get a hedge. "
"Pooh! " says the other, "did you ever know one man win a
race ? »
"Ay, that I have," says his friend, and walks off toward the
Oriel crowd to take five to four on Oriel in half-sovereigns, if he
can get it.
Now their dark friend of yesterday comes up at a trot, and
pulls up close to the captain, with whom he is evidently dear
friends. He is worth looking at, being coxswain of the O. U. B. ;
the best steerer, runner, and swimmer in Oxford; amphibious
himself, and sprung from an amphibious race. His own boat
is in no danger, so he has left her to take care of herself. He
is on the lookout for recruits for the University crew, and no
recruiting sergeant has a sharper eye for the sort of stuff he
requires.
"What's his name? " he says in a low tone to Jervis, giv-
ing a jerk with his head toward Hardy.
"Where did you get
him? "
"Hardy," answers the captain in the same tone; "it's his first
night in the boat. "
"I know that," replies the coxswain: "I never saw him row
before yesterday. He's the fellow who sculls in that brown skiff,
isn't he? "
"Yes, and I think he'll do; keep your eye on him. "
The coxswain nods as if he were pretty much of the same
mind, and examines Hardy with the eye of a connoisseur, pretty
much as the judge at an agricultural show looks at the prize
## p. 7702 (#516) ###########################################
7702
THOMAS HUGHES
bull. Hardy is tightening the strap of his stretcher, and all
unconscious of the compliments which are being paid him. The
great authority seems satisfied with his inspection, grins, rubs his
hands, and trots off to the Oriel boat to make comparisons.
Just as the first gun is heard, Grey sidles nervously to the
front of the crowd as if he were doing something very audacious,
and draws Hardy's attention, exchanging sympathizing nods with
him, but saying nothing,- for he knows not what to say,- and
then disappearing again in the crowd.
"Hollo, Drysdale, is that you? " says Blake, as they push off
from the shore. "I thought you were going to take it easy in a
punt. '
>>
"So I thought," said Drysdale; "but I couldn't keep away,
and here I am. I shall run up; and mind, if I see you within
ten feet, and cocksure to win, I'll give a view halloo. I'll be
bound you shall hear it. "
"May it come speedily," said Blake, and then settled himself
in his seat.
"Eyes in the boat-mind now, steady all; watch the stroke
and don't quicken. "
These are Miller's last words; every faculty of himself and
the crew being now devoted to getting a good start. This is no
difficult matter, as the water is like glass, and the boat lies
lightly on it, obeying the slightest dip of the oars of bow and
two, who just feel the water twice or thrice in the last minute.
Then, after a few moments of breathless hush on the bank, the
last gun is fired and they are off.
The same scene of mad excitement ensues, only tenfold more
intense, as almost the whole interest of the races is to-night
concentrated on the two head boats and their fate.
At every
gate there is a jam, and the weaker vessels are shoved into the
ditches, upset, and left unnoticed. The most active men, includ-
ing the O. U. B. coxswain, shun the gates altogether and take
the big ditches in their stride, making for the long bridges, that
they may get quietly over these and be safe for the best part of
the race.
They know that the critical point of the struggle will
be near the finish.
Both boats make a beautiful start; and again, as before in
the first dash, the St. Ambrose pace tells, and they gain their
boat's-length before first winds fail: then they settle down for a
long, steady effort. Both crews are rowing comparatively steady,
## p. 7703 (#517) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7703
Thus they
reserving themselves for the tug of war up above.
pass the Gut, and so those two treacherous corners, the scene
⚫ of countless bumps, into the wider water beyond, up under the
willows.
•
Miller's face is decidedly hopeful; he shows no sign, indeed,
but you can see that he is not the same man as he was at this
place in the last race. He feels that to-day the boat is full of
life, and that he can call on his crew with hopes of an answer.
H well-trained eye also detects that while both crews are at
full stretch, his own, instead of losing as it did on the last
night, is now gaining inch by inch on Oriel. The gain is scarcely
perceptible to him even; from the bank it is quite imperceptible:
but there it is; he is surer and surer of it, as one after another
the willows are left behind.
he
And now comes the pinch. The Oriel captain is beginning to
be conscious of the fact which has been dawning on Miller, but
will not acknowledge it to himself; and as his coxswain turns
boat's head gently across the stream, and makes for the Berkshire
side and the goal, now full in view, he smiles grimly as he
quickens his stroke, he will shake off these light-heeled gentry
yet, as he did before.
Miller sees the move in a moment and signals his captain,
and the next stroke St. Ambrose has quickened also; and now
there is no mistake about it,-St. Ambrose is creeping up slowly
but surely. The boat's-length lessens to forty feet, thirty feet;
surely and steadily lessens. But the race is not lost yet; thirty
feet is a short space enough to look at on the water, but a good
bit to pick up foot by foot in the last two hundred yards of a
desperate struggle. They are over under the Berkshire side
now, and there stands up the winning-post, close ahead, all but
won. The distance lessens and lessens still, but the Oriel crew
stick steadily and gallantly to their work, and will fight every inch
of distance to the last. The Orielites on the bank, who are rush-
ing along, sometimes in the water, sometimes out, hoarse, furious,
madly alternating between hope and despair, have no reason to
be ashamed of a man in the crew. Off the mouth of the Cher-
well there is still twenty feet between them. Another minute,
and it will be over one way or another. Every man in both
crews is now doing his best, and no mistake: tell me which boat
holds the most men who can do better than their best at a
pinch, who will risk a broken blood-vessel, and I will tell you
## p. 7704 (#518) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7704
how it will end. "Hard pounding, gentlemen: let's see who will
pound longest," the Duke is reported to have said at Waterloo,
and won.
"Now, Tummy, lad, 'tis thou or I," Big Ben said as
he came up to the last round of his hardest fight, and won. Is
there a man of that temper in either crew to-night? If so, now's
his time. For both coxswains have called on their men for the
last effort; Miller is whirling the tassel of his right-hand tiller
rope round his head, like a wiry little lunatic; from the towing-
path, from Christ Church meadow, from the rows of punts, from
the clustered tops of the barges, comes a roar of encouragement
and applause, and the band, unable to resist the impulse, breaks
with a crash into the 'Jolly Young Waterman,' playing two bars
to the second. A bump in the Gut is nothing-a few partisans
on the towing-path to cheer you, already out of breath; but up
here at the very finish, with all Oxford looking on, when the
prize is the headship of the river-once in a generation only do
men get such a chance.
Who ever saw Jervis not up to his work? The St. Ambrose
stroke is glorious. Tom had an atom of go still left in the very
back of his head, and at this moment he heard Drysdale's view
halloo above all the din: it seemed to give him a lift, and other
men besides in the boat, for in another six strokes the gap is
lessened and St. Ambrose has crept up to ten feet, and now to
five, from the stern of Oriel. Weeks afterward Hardy confided
to Tom that when he heard that view halloo he seemed to feel
the muscles of his arms and legs turn into steel, and did more
work in the last twenty strokes than in any other forty in the
earlier part of the race.
Another fifty yards and Oriel is safe; but the look on the
captain's face is so ominous that their coxswain glances over his
shoulder. The bow of St. Ambrose is within two feet of their
rudder. It is a moment for desperate expedients. He pulls his
left tiller rope suddenly, thereby carrying the stern of his own
boat out of the line of the St. Ambrose, and calls on his crew
once more: they respond gallantly yet, but the rudder is against
them for a moment, and the boat drags. St. Ambrose overlaps.
"A bump, a bump! " shout the St. - Ambrosians or shore. "Row
on, row on! " screams Miller. He has not yet felt the electric
shock, and knows he will miss his bump if the young ones slacken
for a moment. A young coxswain would have gone on making
shots at the stern of the Oriel boat, and so have lost.
## p. 7705 (#519) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7705
A ump now and no mistake: the bow of the St. Ambrose
boat jams the oar of the Oriel stroke, and the two boats pass the
winning-post with the way that was on them when the bump
was made. So near a shave was it.
To describe the scene on the bank is beyond me. It was a
hurly-burly of delirious joy, in the midst of which took place a
terrific combat between Jack and the Oriel dog,—a noble black
bull terrier belonging to the college in general, and no one in
particular, who always attended the races and felt the misfortune.
keenly. Luckily, they were parted without worse things happen-
ing; for though the Oriel men were savage, and not disinclined
for a jostle, the milk of human kindness was too strong for the
moment in their adversaries, and they extricated themselves from
the crowd, carrying off Crib, their dog, and looking straight
before them into vacancy.
-
"Well rowed, boys," says Jervis, turning round to his crew,
as they lay panting on their oars.
"Well rowed, five," says Miller, who, even in the hour of
such a triumph, is not inclined to be general in laudation.
"Well rowed, five," is echoed from the bank; it is that cun-
ning man, the recruiting sergeant. "Fatally well rowed," he
adds to a comrade, with whom he gets into one of the punts to
cross to Christ Church meadow: "we must have him in the Uni-
versity crew. "
"I don't think you'll get him to row, from what I hear,"
answers the other.
"Then he must be handcuffed and carried into the boat by
force," says the coxswain O. U. B. : "why is not the press gang
an institution in this university? "
THE FIGHT BETWEEN TOM BROWN AND WILLIAMS
From Tom Brown's School Days'
TOM
Oм felt he had got his work cut out for him, as he stripped
off his jacket, waistcoat, and braces. East tied his hand-
kerchief round his waist, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves
for him.
"Now, old boy, don't you open your mouth to say a word, or
try to help yourself a bit,—we'll do all that: you keep all your
breath and strength for the Slogger. "
## p. 7706 (#520) ###########################################
7706
THOMAS HUGHES
1
Martin meanwhile folded the clothes, and put them under the
chapel rails; and now Tom, with East to handle him and Martin
to give him a knee, steps out on the turf and is ready for all
that may come; and here is the Slogger too, all stripped, and
thirsting for the fray.
It doesn't look a fair match at first glance. Williams is nearly
two inches taller and probably a long year older than his oppo-
nent, and he is very strongly made about the arms and shoul-
ders; "peels well," as the little knot of big fifth-form boys, the
´amateurs, say,-who stand outside the ring of little boys, looking
complacently on but taking no active part in the proceedings.
But down below he is not so good by any means: no spring
from the loins, and feeblish, not to say shipwrecky, about the
knees. Tom, on the contrary, though not half so strong in the
arms, is good all over; straight, hard, and springy from neck to
ankle, better perhaps in his legs than anywhere. Besides, you
can see by the clear white of his eye and fresh bright look of
his skin that he is in tiptop training, able to do all he knows;
while the Slogger looks rather sodden, as if he didn't take much
exercise and eat too much tuck. The time-keeper is chosen, a
large ring made, and the two stand up opposite each other for
a moment, giving us time just to make our little observations.
"If Tom'll only condescend to fight with his head and heels,"
as East mutters to Martin, "we shall do. "
But seemingly he won't, for there he goes in, making play
with both hands. Hard all, is the word: the two stand to each
other like men; rally follows rally in quick succession, each fight-
ing as if he thought to finish the whole thing out of hand.
"Can't last at this rate," say the knowing ones, while the par-
tisans of each make the air ring with their shouts and counter-
shouts of encouragement, approval, and defiance.
"Take it easy, take it easy-keep away, let him come after
you," implores East, as he wipes Tom's face after the first round,
with wet sponge; while he sits back on Martin's knee, supported
by the Madman's long arms, which tremble a little from excite-
ment.
"Time's up! " calls the time-keeper.
"There he goes again, hang it all! " growls East, as his man
is at it again as hard as ever.
A very severe round follows, in which Tom gets out-and-out
the worst of it, and is at last hit clean off his legs and deposited
on the grass by a right-hander from the Slogger.
## p. 7707 (#521) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7707
Loud shouts rise from the boys of Slogger's house, and the
schoolhouse are silent and vicious, ready to pick quarrels any-
where.
"Two to one in half-crowns on the big 'un," says Rattle, one
of the amateurs, a tall fellow, in thunder-and-lightning waistcoat,
and puffy, good-natured face.
"Done! " says Groove, another amateur of quieter look, taking
out his note-book to enter it-for our friend Rattle sometimes
forgets these little things.
Meantime East is freshening up Tom with the sponges for
next round, and has set two other boys to rub his hands.
"Tom, old boy," whispers he, "this may be fun for you, but
it's death to me. He'll hit all the fight out of you in another
five minutes, and then I shall go and drown myself in the island
ditch. Feint him use your legs! - draw him about! he'll lose
his wind then in no time, and you can go into him. Hit at his
body, too; we'll take care of his frontispiece by-and-by. "
Tom felt the wisdom of the counsel, and saw already that he
couldn't go in and finish the Slogger off at mere hammer-and-
tongs, so changed his tactics completely in the third round. He
now fights cautious, getting away from and parrying the Slogger's
lunging hits, instead of trying to counter, and leading his enemy
a dance all round the ring after him.
"He's funking: go in, Williams! " "Catch him up! "
him off! " scream the small boys of the Slogger party.
"Just what we want," thinks East, chuckling to himself, as
he sees Williams, excited by these shouts, and thinking the
game in his own hands, blowing himself in his exertions to get
to close quarters again, while Tom is keeping away with perfect
ease.
"Finish
They quarter over the ground again and again, Tom always
on the defensive.
The Slogger pulls up at last for a moment, fairly blown.
"Now then, Tom," sings out East, dancing with delight.
Tom goes in in a twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows,
and gets away again before the Slogger can catch his wind;
which when he does he rushes with blind fury at Tom, and
being skillfully parried and avoided, overreaches himself and falls
on his face, amid terrific cheers from the schoolhouse boys.
"Double your two to one? " says Groove to Rattle, note-book
in hand.
## p. 7708 (#522) ###########################################
7708
THOMAS HUGHES
"Stop a bit,” says that hero, looking uncomfortably at Will-
iams, who is puffing away on his second's knee, winded enough,
but little the worse in any other way.
After another round the Slogger too seems to see that he can't
go in and win right off, and has met his match or thereabouts.
So he too begins to use his head, and tries to make Tom lose
patience and come in before his time. And so the fight sways
on, now one and now the other getting a trifling pull.
It is grim earnest now, and no mistake. Both boys feel this,
and summon every power of head, hand, and eye to their aid.
A piece of luck on either side, a foot slipping, a blow getting
well home, or another fall, may decide it. Tom works slowly
round for an opening; he has all the legs, and can choose his
own time: the Slogger waits for the attack, and hopes to finish
it by some heavy right-handed blow. As they quarter slowly
over the ground, the evening sun comes out from behind a cloud
and falls full on Williams's face. Tom darts in; the heavy right
hand is delivered, but only grazes his head. A short rally at
close quarters, and they close; in another moment the Slogger is
thrown again heavily for the third time.
"I'll give you three to two on the little one in half-crowns,”
said Groove to Rattle.
"No, thank 'ee," answers the other, diving his hands further
into his coat-tails.
Just at this stage of the proceedings the door of the turret
which leads to the doctor's library suddenly opens, and he steps
into the close and makes straight for the ring, in which Brown
and the Slogger are both seated on their seconds' knees for the
last time.
"The doctor! the doctor! " shouts some small boy who catches
sight of him; and the ring melts away in a few seconds, the
small boys tearing off, Tom collaring his jacket and waistcoat
and slipping through the little gate by the chapel, and round the
corner to Harrowell's with his backers, as lively as need be;
Williams and his backers making off not quite so fast across
the close; Groove, Rattle, and the other bigger fellows trying to
combine dignity and prudence in a comical manner, and walk-
ing off fast enough, they hope, not to be recognized, and not fast
enough to look like running away.
## p. 7708 (#523) ###########################################
## p. 7708 (#524) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO.
## p. 7708 (#525) ###########################################
#7
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## p. 7708 (#526) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO.
6397
## p. 7709 (#527) ###########################################
7709
VICTOR HUGO
·
(1802-1885)
BY ADOLPHE COHN
ICTOR MARIE HUGO, always mentioned as Victor Hugo, is un-
questionably the greatest literary figure of nineteenth-century
France. By almost universal consent he is recognized as the
greatest French poet; he is one of the greater poets of the world.
His birthplace was Besançon, an old town and fortress of the East
of France; which, having belonged to the Dukes of Burgundy, passed
with all their possessions to the Emperor Charles V. , King of Spain,
and grandson by his father of Duchess Mary of Burgundy, the only
child of the celebrated Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold. Besan-
çon did not return to France until 1677, when it was ceded to King
Louis XIV. by the treaty of Nimeguen. This explains how, in a kind
of autobiographical poem, Hugo could call the city of his birth "an
old Spanish town. " In the same poem he says: "The century was
two years old.
Already, under Bonaparte, Napoleon was ap-
pearing. " Thus he states the year of his birth, and the political con-
dition of France when he first saw the light of day, on February 26th,
1802,- or, according to the calendar then in use, on the seventh day
of the month of Ventôse, in the year Ten of the French Republic.
His father, Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo, a major in the service
of the Republic, later rose to the rank of general; accompanied Joseph
Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, first to Naples and then to Madrid,
when Joseph reluctantly gave up the crown of Naples for the title of
King of Spain; and died in the year 1828, a lieutenant-general in the
armies of Louis XVIII. , King of France. The son was already famous,
and was ardently defended and as ardently attacked as the foremost
leader in that literary and artistic revolution which has received the
name of Romanticism.
He was still very young, only twenty-six, but his name had been
before the public for six years, - his first volume of verse, 'Odes and
Diverse Poems,' having appeared in 1822. From the beginning, read-
ers had been struck by the passionate fervor, the dazzling color, the
splendid imagery, and the magnificent rhythm of his lyric utterances.
Most of these were qualities that French poetry had not known be-
fore, at least till the publication of Lamartine's first 'Meditations' in
1820; and their appearance in Hugo's first productions is, at least
partly, to be ascribed to the circumstances of his education.
## p. 7710 (#528) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7710
To a certain extent he had shared his father's wandering exist-
ence. With his mother and brothers he had left Paris, where the
family had come after leaving Besançon, and joined General Hugo in
Madrid; there he became a boarding pupil in an institution reserved
for the children of Spanish noblemen, among whom he was entitled
to be educated on account of the title of "count" granted to his
father by King Joseph. The disasters that overtook the French in
Spain compelled the Hugo family to seek safety in flight, and soon
he was in Paris again. One morning his mother stopped him in front
of a poster announcing that a number of officers concerned in the
almost successful plot of General Malet to overthrow Napoleon, had
been court-martialed and shot in the plains of Grenelle. In the list,
Madame Hugo directed her son Victor's attention to one name, that
of General Laboise; adding simply these words: "He was your god-
father. " In fact, Laboise had been more than a godfather to young
Victor and his brothers. While they were living in a part of the old
convent of the Feuillantines, he, proscribed and compelled to hide,
had one day mysteriously appeared, and had soon become the boys'
chief instructor. Then he had as mysteriously disappeared, soon to
end his life by the bullets of the executing platoon. Upon a mind
gifted with remarkable receptivity, upon an imagination which trans-
formed everything into a visible picture, upon an eye which seized
small details and absorbed color with lightning rapidity, such scenes,
such dramas, such contrasts, could not fail to produce the deepest
impression.
These gifts were, however, not the first that manifested themselves
when the youth began to pass from impression to expression. His
mastery of words, his power of verbal combination, is the only one of
his great characteristics which is visible in his first poetical outpour-
ings. The old classical school of French poetry was then dying a
lingering death; like those rivers which, after carrying a majestic
and beneficent flow of water through magnificent landscapes, finally
turn into myriads of small rivulets soon absorbed by barren sands.
The poetical forms that had been so powerful in the hands of Cor-
neille and Racine, now handled by inferior writers possessing depth
neither of thought nor of feeling, were gradually destroyed under a
heap of barren periphrases and circumlocutions. To hint instead of
naming, to use twenty words when one would have sufficed, seemed
to be the highest achievement of these writers; and good Abbé
Delille came to be considered a great poet. Young Hugo first fol-
lowed in the footsteps of the so-called great man of his time, and
thus won a number of prizes in the poetical competitions of his early
years.
The catastrophes in which Napoleon's power disappeared, the
strange events which accompanied and followed the restoration of
## p. 7711 (#529) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7711
the Bourbons to the throne of France, soon gave to his poetry a more
serious tone. To him, as to every lover of French poetry, the success
of Lamartine's 'Meditations' was a revelation, a beacon showing new
pathways to greatness. Not simply general ideas, but individual
thought and personal emotion, were seen to be legitimate subjects.
for poetical treatment.
## p. 7691 (#505) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7691
with some purpose or destination, and ended by losing me in the
intricacies of the narrowest, crookedest, and most inconsequent
little streets in the world, or left me cast away upon the un-
familiar waters of some canal as far as possible from the point
aimed at. Dark and secret little courts lay in wait for my blun-
dering steps, and I was incessantly surprised and brought to sur-
render by paths that beguiled me up to dead walls or the sudden
brinks of canals. The wide and open squares before the innu-
merable churches of the city were equally victorious, and contin-
ually took me prisoner. But all places had something rare and
worthy to be seen: if not loveliness of sculpture or architecture,
at least interesting squalor and picturesque wretchedness; and I
believe I had less delight in proper Objects of Interest than in
the dirty neighborhoods that reeked with unwholesome winter
damps below, and peered curiously out with frowzy heads and
beautiful eyes from the high, heavy-shuttered casements above.
Every court had its carven well to show me, in the noisy keep-
ing of the water-carriers and the slatternly, statuesque gossips of
the place. The remote and noisome canals were pathetic with
empty old palaces peopled by herds of poor, that decorated the
sculptured balconies with the tatters of epicene linen, and patched
the lofty windows with obsolete hats.
I found the night as full of beauty as the day, when caprice
led me from the brilliancy of St. Mark's and the glittering streets
of shops that branch away from the Piazza, and lost me in the
quaint recesses of the courts, or the tangles of the distant alleys,
where the dull little oil lamps vied with the tapers burning before
the street-corner shrines of the Virgin in making the way ob-
scure, and deepening the shadows about the doorways and under
the frequent arches. I remember distinctly among the beautiful
nights of that time, the soft night of late winter which first
showed me the scene you may behold from the Public Gardens
at the end of the long concave line of the Riva degli Schiavoni.
Lounging there upon the southern parapet of the Gardens, I
turned from the dim bell-towers of the evanescent islands in
the east (a solitary gondola gliding across the calm of the water,
and striking its moonlight silver into multitudinous ripples), and
glanced athwart the vague shipping in the basin of St. Mark,
and saw all the lights from the Piazzetta to the Giudecca, mak-
ing a crescent of flame in the air, and casting deep into the
water under them a crimson glory that sank also down and down
## p. 7692 (#506) ###########################################
7692
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
in my own heart, and illumined all its memories of beauty and
delight. Behind these lamps rose the shadowy masses of church
and palace; the moon stood bright and full in the heavens; the
gondola drifted away to the northward; the islands of the lagoons
seemed to rise and sink with the light palpitations of the waves
like pictures on the undulating fields of banners; the stark rig-
ging of a ship showed black against the sky; the Lido sank from
sight upon the east, as if the shore had composed itself to sleep
by the side of its beloved sea to the music of the surge that
gently beat its sands; the yet leafless boughs of the trees above
me stirred themselves together, and out of one of those trem-
bling towers in the lagoons one rich full sob burst from the
heart of a bell, too deeply stricken with the glory of the scene,
and suffused the languid night with the murmur of luxurious,
ineffable sadness.
But there is a perfect democracy in the realm of the beautiful,
and whatsoever pleases is equal to any other thing there, no
matter how low its origin or humble its composition; and the
magnificence of that moonlight scene gave me no deeper joy than
I won from the fine spectacle of an old man whom I saw burn-
ing coffee one night in the little court behind my lodgings, and
whom I recollect now as one of the most interesting people I
saw in my first days at Venice. All day long the air of that
neighborhood had reeked with the odors of the fragrant berry,
and all day long this patient old man-sage, let me call him—
had turned the sheet-iron cylinder in which it was roasting over
an open fire, after the picturesque fashion of roasting coffee in
Venice. Now that the night had fallen, and the stars shone
down upon him, and the red of the flame luridly illumined him,
he showed more grand and venerable than ever. Simple, abstract
humanity has its own grandeur in Italy; and it is not hard here
for the artist to find the primitive types with which genius loves
best to deal. As for this old man, he had the beard of a saint
and the dignity of a senator, harmonized with the squalor of a
beggar, superior to which shone his abstract, unconscious grandeur
of humanity. A vast and calm melancholy, which had nothing to
do with burning coffee, dwelt in his aspect and attitude; and if
he had been some dread supernatural agency, turning the wheel
of fortune, and doing men instead of coffee brown, he could not
have looked more sadly and weirdly impressive. When presently
he rose from his seat and lifted the cylinder from its place, and
## p. 7693 (#507) ###########################################
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
7693
the clinging flames leaped after it, and he shook it, and a
volume of luminous smoke enveloped him and glorified him,—
then I felt with secret anguish that he was beyond art, and
turned sadly from the spectacle of that sublime and hopeless
magnificence.
At other times (but this was in broad daylight) I was troubled
by the æsthetic perfection of a certain ruffian boy, who sold cakes.
of baked Indian meal to the soldiers in the military station near
the Piazza, and whom I often noted from the windows of the
little caffè there, where you get an excellent caffè bianco (coffee
with milk) for ten soldi and one to the waiter. I have reason to
fear that this boy dealt over-shrewdly with the Austrians, for a
pitiless war raged between him and one of the sergeants.
His
hair was dark, his cheek was of a bronze better than olive; and
he wore a brave cap of red flannel, drawn down to eyes of lus-
trous black. For the rest, he gave unity and coherence to a
jacket and pantaloons of heterogeneous elements, and, such was
the elasticity of his spirit, a buoyant grace to feet incased in
wooden shoes. Habitually came a barrel-organist and ground
before the barracks, and
"Took the soul
Of that waste place with joy";
and ever, when this organist came to a certain lively waltz, and
threw his whole soul as it were into the crank of his instru-
ment, my beloved ragamuffin failed not to seize another cake-boy
in his arms, and thus embraced, to whirl through a wild inspira-
tion of figures, in which there was something grotesquely rhyth-
mic, something of indescribable barbaric magnificence, spiritualized
into a grace of movement superior to the energy of the North and
the extravagant fervor of the East. It was coffee and not wine
that I drank; but I fable all the same that I saw reflected in
this superb and artistic superation of the difficulties of dancing
in that unfriendly foot-gear, something of the same genius that
combated and vanquished the elements, to build its home upon
sea-washed sands in marble structures of airy and stately splen-
dor, and gave to architecture new glories full of eternal surprise.
So, I say, I grew early into sympathy and friendship with
Venice; and being newly from a land where everything, mor-
ally and materially, was in good repair, I rioted sentimentally on
the picturesque ruin, the pleasant discomfort and hopelessness of
## p. 7694 (#508) ###########################################
7694
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
everything about me here. It was not yet the season to behold
all the delight of the lazy outdoor life of the place; but never-
theless I could not help seeing that great part of the people,
both rich and poor, seemed to have nothing to do, and that
nobody seemed to be driven by any inward or outward impulse.
When however I ceased (as I must in time) to be merely a
spectator of this idleness, and learned that I too must assume my
share of the common indolence, I found it a grievous burden.
Old habits of work, old habits of hope, made my endless leisure
irksome to me, and almost intolerable when I ascertained, fairly
and finally, that in my desire to fulfill long-cherished but after
all merely general designs of literary study, I had forsaken
wholesome struggle in the currents where I felt the motion of
the age, only to drift into a lifeless eddy of the world, remote
from incentive and sensation.
For such is Venice; and the will must be strong and the faith
indomitable in him who can long retain, amid the influences of
her stagnant quiet, a practical belief in God's purpose of a great
moving, anxious, toiling, aspiring world outside. When you have
yielded, as after a while I yielded, to these influences, a gentle
incredulity possesses you; and if you consent that such a thing is
as earnest and useful life, you cannot help wondering why it
need be. The charm of the place sweetens your temper, but cor-
rupts you; and I found it a sad condition of my perception of the
beauty of Venice and friendship with it, that I came in some
unconscious way to regard her fate as my own; and when I
began to write the sketches which go to form this book, it was
as hard to speak of any ugliness in her, or of the doom written
against her in the hieroglyphic seams and fissures of her crum-
bling masonry, as if the fault and penalty were mine. I do not
so greatly blame, therefore, the writers who have committed so
many sins of omission concerning her, and made her all light,
color, canals, and palaces. One's conscience, more or less un-
comfortably vigilant elsewhere, drowses here, and it is difficult
to remember that fact is more virtuous than fiction. In other
years, when there was life in the city, and this sad ebb of
prosperity was full tide in her canals, there might have been
some incentive to keep one's thoughts and words from lapsing
into habits of luxurious dishonesty, some reason for telling the
whole hard truth of things, some policy to serve, some end to
gain. But now, what matter?
## p. 7695 (#509) ###########################################
7695
YOG
THOMAS HUGHES
(1823-1896)
HE early life of Thomas Hughes was that of the typical Eng-
lish school lad; and luckily he had the genius to express in
literature the daily incidents of that life, with a freshness of
sympathy, a vigorous manliness, and a moral insight that make his
stories a revelation of boy nature. He was the son of the vicar of
Uffington in Berkshire, where he was born in 1823; and in this first
home he learned to love the English country, and to understand vil-
lage and rustic nature. At seven he was sent away to school, and
was only ten when he went to Rugby. He
has disclaimed identity with his hero, but
Tom Brown' is certainly a product of his
personal impressions; and to his stay at
Rugby we owe the vivid presentation of Dr.
Arnold's noble figure, and the loving por-
trayal of his influence in the great public
school. From Rugby Thomas Hughes went
to Oxford, and later he studied law at Lin-
coln's Inn. He was called to the Bar of the
Inner Temple in 1848, and began practice
at once.
Throughout his long public career, as
advanced Liberal in Parliament, as founder
with Frederick Maurice of the Christian So-
cialists, as creator of Rugby, a socialistic community in the mountains
of Tennessee, he tried most earnestly to exercise a helpful influence
apon English working-people. To him right living, which he sought
to inculcate, was the object of life; and the stimulus most needed, an
appeal to moral courage.
He was a man of strong convictions on one side or the other of a
question. At the outbreak of our Civil War, his bold advocacy of the
abolition of slavery riveted a lasting friendship with James Russell
Lowell.
THOMAS HUGHES
In his early manhood Thomas Hughes essayed journalism. He
wrote many sketches for the London Spectator,-chiefly accounts of
traveling experiences, and he thus defrayed the cost of many little.
Continental jaunts. These sketches served as his apprenticeship in
## p. 7696 (#510) ###########################################
7696
THOMAS HUGHES
writing, and long afterward they were collected in book form with
the title Vacation Rambles. ' But authorship was a secondary inter-
est until it occurred to him to write a story for his sons and nephews;
and Tom Brown's School Days,' first appearing in 1857, made him
famous.
Two years later The Scouring of the White Horse,' a
spirited account of a vacation trip, had a respectful although less cor-
dial reception. The great success of the first story led Mr. Hughes
to continue his hero's career with Tom Brown at Oxford,' which
was first published as a serial in Macmillan's Magazine. This second
volume, which is much the longer, although often fine and spirited
sometimes waxes prolix, and has never been so popular as the earlier
story.
Judge Hughes's other writings include several memoirs and bi-
ographies, notably the 'Memoir of a Brother,' and that of Kingsley;
books of religious import, like The Manliness of Christ'; a sketch of
'Rugby, Tennessee,' and various miscellanies. But the bulk of his
literary work sinks into insignificance when set beside the peerless
boy's-book which brought him fame.
"I hate the idea of being presented in any guise to any public,»
he once wrote. His best work was not written for fame, but in the
earnest desire to offer helpful advice as strongly and straightforwardly
as possible. That his purpose was avowedly didactic did not lessen
his popularity; for the preaching is so wise and kindly that, as he
himself desired, it seemed to come from a big boy's impulse to help
the less experienced.
THE BOAT RACE
From Tom Brown at Oxford'
ATURDAY night came, and brought with it a most useful though
unpalatable lesson to the St. - Ambrosians. The Oriel boat
was manned chiefly by old oars, seasoned in many a race,
and not liable to panic when hard pressed. They had a fair
though not a first-rate stroke, and a good coxswain: experts re-
marked that they were rather too heavy for their boat, and that
she dipped a little when they put on anything like a severe spurt;
but on the whole they were by no means the sort of crew you
could just run into hand over hand. So Miller and Diogenes
preached, and so the Ambrosians found out to their cost.
They had the pace of the other boat, and gained as usual a
boat's-length before the Gut: but first those two fatal corners
were passed, and then other well-remembered spots where former
## p. 7697 (#511) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7697
bumps had been made, and still Miller made no sign; on the
contrary, he looked gloomy and savage. The St. -Ambrosian shouts
from the shore, too, changed from the usual exultant peals into
something like a quiver of consternation, while the air was rent
with the name and laudations of "Little Oriel. "
Long before the Cherwell, Drysdale was completely baked (he
had played truant the day before and dined at the Weirs, where
he had imbibed much dubious hock), but he from old habit man-
aged to keep time. Tom and the other young oars got flurried,
and quickened; the boat dragged, there was no life left in her;
and though they managed just to hold their first advantage, could
not put her a foot nearer the stern of the Oriel boat, which
glided past the winning-post a clear boat's-length ahead of her
pursuers, and with a crew much less distressed.
Such races must tell on strokes; and even Jervis, who had
pulled magnificently throughout, was very much done at the close,
and leaned over his oar with a swimming in his head and an
approach to faintness, and was scarcely able to see for a minute
or so. Miller's indignation knew no bounds, but he bottled it up
till he had manoeuvred the crew into their dressing-room by
themselves, Jervis having stopped below. Then he let out, and
did not spare them. "They would kill their captain, whose little
finger was worth the whole of them; they were disgracing the
college; three or four of them had neither heart nor head nor
pluck. "
They all felt that this was unjust; for after all, had they
not brought the boat up to the second place? Poor Diogenes
sat in a corner and groaned; he forgot to prefix "old fellow"
to the few observations he made. Blake had great difficulty in
adjusting his necktie before the glass; he merely remarked in a
pause of the objurgation, "In faith, coxswain, these be very bitter
words. »
Tom and most of the others were too much out of heart to
resist; but at last Drysdale fired up: -
"You've no right to be so savage, that I can see," he said,
stopping the low whistle suddenly in which he was indulging, as
he sat on the corner of the table. "You seem to think No. 2 the
weakest out of several weak places in the boat. "
"Yes, I do," said Miller.
"Then this honorable member," said Drysdale, getting off the
table, "seeing that his humble efforts are unappreciated, thinks it
XIII-482
## p. 7698 (#512) ###########################################
7698
THOMAS HUGHES
best for the public service to place his resignation in the hands
of your Coxswainship. "
«< Which my Coxswainship is graciously pleased to accept,"
replied Miller.
"Hurrah for a roomy punt and a soft cushion next racing
night! It's almost worth while to have been rowing all this
time, to realize the sensations I shall feel when I see you fellows
passing the Cherwell on Tuesday. "
"Suave est, it's what I'm partial to, mari magno, in the last
reach, a terra, from the towing-path, alterius magnum spectare
laborem, to witness the tortures of you wretched beggars in the
boat. I'm obliged to translate for Drysdale, who never learned
Latin," said Blake, finishing his tie and turning to the company.
There was an awkward silence. Miller was chafing inwardly,
and running over in his mind what was to be done; and nobody
else seemed quite to know what ought to happen next, when the
door opened and Jervis came in.
"Congratulate me, my captain," said Drysdale: "I'm well out
of it at last. "
Jervis pished and pshawed a little at hearing what had hap-
pened, but his presence acted like oil on the waters. The moment
that the resignation was named, Tom's thoughts had turned to
Hardy. Now was the time: he had such confidence in the man,
that the idea of getting him in for the next race entirely changed
the aspect of affairs to him, and made him feel as "bumptious"
again as he had done in the morning. So with this idea in his
head, he hung about till the captain had made his toilet, and
joined himself to him and Miller as they walked up.
"Well, what are we to do now? " said the captain.
"That's just what you have to settle," said Miller: "you
have been up all the term, and know the men's pulling better
than I. "
"I suppose we must press somebody from the torpid. Let
me see, there's Burton. "
"He rolls like a porpoise," interrupted Miller positively:
"impossible. "
"Stewart might do, then. "
"Never kept time for three strokes in his life," said Miller.
"Well, there are no better men," said the captain.
<< Then we may lay our account to stopping where we are, if
we don't even lose a place," said Miller.
## p. 7699 (#513) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7699
"Dust unto dust; what must be, must;
If you can't get crumb, you'd best eat crust,"
-
said the captain.
"It's all very well talking coolly now," said Miller; "but you'll
kill yourself trying to bump, and there are three more nights. "
"Hardy would row if you asked him, I'm sure," said Tom.
The captain looked at Miller, who shook his head. "I don't
think it," he said: "I take him to be a shy bird that won't come
to everybody's whistle. We might have had him two years ago,
I believe I wish we had. "
"I always told you so," said Jervis; "at any rate, let's try
him. He can but say no, and I don't think he will; for you see
he has been at the starting-place every night, and as keen as a
freshman all the time. >>>
"I'm sure he won't," said Tom: "I know he would give any-
thing to pull. "
"You had better go to his rooms and sound him," said the
captain; "Miller and I will follow in half an hour. " We have
already heard how Tom's mission prospered.
The next day, at a few minutes before two o'clock, the St.
Ambrose crew, including Hardy, with Miller (who was a desperate
and indefatigable pedestrian) for leader, crossed Magdalen Bridge.
At five they returned to college, having done a little over fifteen
miles, fair heel-and-toe walking, in the interval. The afternoon
had been very hot, and Miller chuckled to the captain, "I don't
think there will be much trash left in any of them after that.
That fellow Hardy is as fine as a race-horse; and did you see, he
never turned a hair all the way. "
The crew dispersed to their rooms, delighted with the per-
formance now that it was over, and feeling that they were much
the better for it, though they all declared it had been harder
work than any race they had yet pulled. It would have done a
trainer's heart good to have seen them, some twenty minutes
afterward, dropping into hall (where they were allowed to dine.
on Sundays, on the joint), fresh from cold baths, and looking
ruddy and clear, and hard enough for anything.
Again on Monday, not a chance was lost. The St. Ambrose
boat started soon after one o'clock for Abingdon. They swung
steadily down the whole way, and back again to Sandford without
a single spurt; Miller generally standing in the stern, and preach-
ing above all things steadiness and time. From Sandford up
## p. 7700 (#514) ###########################################
7700
THOMAS HUGHES
they were accompanied by half a dozen men or so, who ran up
the bank watching them. The struggle for the first place on the
river was creating great excitement in the rowing world; and
these were some of the most keen connoisseurs, who, having
heard that St. Ambrose had changed a man, were on the lookout
to satisfy themselves as to how it would work. The general
opinion was veering round in favor of Oriel: changes so late in
the races, and at such a critical moment, were looked upon as
very damaging.
Foremost among the runners on the bank was a wiry dark
man, with sanguine complexion, who went with a peculiar long
low stride, keeping his keen eye well on the boat. Just above
Kennington Island, Jervis, noticing this particular spectator for
the first time, called on the crew, and quickening his stroke, took
them up the reach at racing pace. As they lay in Iffley Lock
the dark man appeared above them, and exchanged a few words
and a good deal of dumb show with the captain and Miller, and
then disappeared.
From Iffley up they went steadily again. On the whole,
Miller seemed to be in very good spirits in the dressing-room:
he thought the boat trimmed better and went better than she
had ever done before, and complimented Blake particularly for
the ease with which he had changed sides. They all went up
in high spirits, calling on their way at "The Choughs" for one
glass of old ale round, which Miller was graciously pleased to
allow. Tom never remembered till after they were out again
that Hardy had never been there before, and felt embarrassed
for a moment; but it soon passed off. A moderate dinner and
early to bed finished the day; and Miller was justified in his
parting remark to the captain: "Well, if we don't win we can
comfort ourselves that we haven't dropped a stitch this last two
days, at any rate. "
Then the eventful day arose which Tom and many another
man felt was to make or mar St. Ambrose. It was a glorious
early summer day, without a cloud, scarcely a breath of air stir-
ring. "We shall have a fair start, at any rate," was the general
feeling. We have already seen what a throat-drying, nervous
business the morning and afternoon of a race day is, and must
not go over the same ground more than we can help; so we will
imagine the St. Ambrose boat down at the starting-place, lying
close to the towing-path, just before the first gun.
## p. 7701 (#515) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7701
There is a much greater crowd than usual opposite the two
first boats. By this time most of the other boats have found
their places, for there is not much chance of anything very excit
ing down below; so, besides the men of Oriel and St. Ambrose
(who muster to-night of all sorts, the fastest of the fast and
slowest of the slow having been by this time shamed into some-
thing like enthusiasm), many of other colleges, whose boats have
no chance of bumping or being bumped, flock to the point of
attraction.
"Do you make out what the change is? " says a backer of
Oriel to his friend in the like predicament.
"Yes: they've got a new No. 5, don't you see? and by
George, I don't like his looks," answered his friend: "awfully
long and strong in the arm, and well ribbed up. A devilish
awkward customer. I shall go and try to get a hedge. "
"Pooh! " says the other, "did you ever know one man win a
race ? »
"Ay, that I have," says his friend, and walks off toward the
Oriel crowd to take five to four on Oriel in half-sovereigns, if he
can get it.
Now their dark friend of yesterday comes up at a trot, and
pulls up close to the captain, with whom he is evidently dear
friends. He is worth looking at, being coxswain of the O. U. B. ;
the best steerer, runner, and swimmer in Oxford; amphibious
himself, and sprung from an amphibious race. His own boat
is in no danger, so he has left her to take care of herself. He
is on the lookout for recruits for the University crew, and no
recruiting sergeant has a sharper eye for the sort of stuff he
requires.
"What's his name? " he says in a low tone to Jervis, giv-
ing a jerk with his head toward Hardy.
"Where did you get
him? "
"Hardy," answers the captain in the same tone; "it's his first
night in the boat. "
"I know that," replies the coxswain: "I never saw him row
before yesterday. He's the fellow who sculls in that brown skiff,
isn't he? "
"Yes, and I think he'll do; keep your eye on him. "
The coxswain nods as if he were pretty much of the same
mind, and examines Hardy with the eye of a connoisseur, pretty
much as the judge at an agricultural show looks at the prize
## p. 7702 (#516) ###########################################
7702
THOMAS HUGHES
bull. Hardy is tightening the strap of his stretcher, and all
unconscious of the compliments which are being paid him. The
great authority seems satisfied with his inspection, grins, rubs his
hands, and trots off to the Oriel boat to make comparisons.
Just as the first gun is heard, Grey sidles nervously to the
front of the crowd as if he were doing something very audacious,
and draws Hardy's attention, exchanging sympathizing nods with
him, but saying nothing,- for he knows not what to say,- and
then disappearing again in the crowd.
"Hollo, Drysdale, is that you? " says Blake, as they push off
from the shore. "I thought you were going to take it easy in a
punt. '
>>
"So I thought," said Drysdale; "but I couldn't keep away,
and here I am. I shall run up; and mind, if I see you within
ten feet, and cocksure to win, I'll give a view halloo. I'll be
bound you shall hear it. "
"May it come speedily," said Blake, and then settled himself
in his seat.
"Eyes in the boat-mind now, steady all; watch the stroke
and don't quicken. "
These are Miller's last words; every faculty of himself and
the crew being now devoted to getting a good start. This is no
difficult matter, as the water is like glass, and the boat lies
lightly on it, obeying the slightest dip of the oars of bow and
two, who just feel the water twice or thrice in the last minute.
Then, after a few moments of breathless hush on the bank, the
last gun is fired and they are off.
The same scene of mad excitement ensues, only tenfold more
intense, as almost the whole interest of the races is to-night
concentrated on the two head boats and their fate.
At every
gate there is a jam, and the weaker vessels are shoved into the
ditches, upset, and left unnoticed. The most active men, includ-
ing the O. U. B. coxswain, shun the gates altogether and take
the big ditches in their stride, making for the long bridges, that
they may get quietly over these and be safe for the best part of
the race.
They know that the critical point of the struggle will
be near the finish.
Both boats make a beautiful start; and again, as before in
the first dash, the St. Ambrose pace tells, and they gain their
boat's-length before first winds fail: then they settle down for a
long, steady effort. Both crews are rowing comparatively steady,
## p. 7703 (#517) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7703
Thus they
reserving themselves for the tug of war up above.
pass the Gut, and so those two treacherous corners, the scene
⚫ of countless bumps, into the wider water beyond, up under the
willows.
•
Miller's face is decidedly hopeful; he shows no sign, indeed,
but you can see that he is not the same man as he was at this
place in the last race. He feels that to-day the boat is full of
life, and that he can call on his crew with hopes of an answer.
H well-trained eye also detects that while both crews are at
full stretch, his own, instead of losing as it did on the last
night, is now gaining inch by inch on Oriel. The gain is scarcely
perceptible to him even; from the bank it is quite imperceptible:
but there it is; he is surer and surer of it, as one after another
the willows are left behind.
he
And now comes the pinch. The Oriel captain is beginning to
be conscious of the fact which has been dawning on Miller, but
will not acknowledge it to himself; and as his coxswain turns
boat's head gently across the stream, and makes for the Berkshire
side and the goal, now full in view, he smiles grimly as he
quickens his stroke, he will shake off these light-heeled gentry
yet, as he did before.
Miller sees the move in a moment and signals his captain,
and the next stroke St. Ambrose has quickened also; and now
there is no mistake about it,-St. Ambrose is creeping up slowly
but surely. The boat's-length lessens to forty feet, thirty feet;
surely and steadily lessens. But the race is not lost yet; thirty
feet is a short space enough to look at on the water, but a good
bit to pick up foot by foot in the last two hundred yards of a
desperate struggle. They are over under the Berkshire side
now, and there stands up the winning-post, close ahead, all but
won. The distance lessens and lessens still, but the Oriel crew
stick steadily and gallantly to their work, and will fight every inch
of distance to the last. The Orielites on the bank, who are rush-
ing along, sometimes in the water, sometimes out, hoarse, furious,
madly alternating between hope and despair, have no reason to
be ashamed of a man in the crew. Off the mouth of the Cher-
well there is still twenty feet between them. Another minute,
and it will be over one way or another. Every man in both
crews is now doing his best, and no mistake: tell me which boat
holds the most men who can do better than their best at a
pinch, who will risk a broken blood-vessel, and I will tell you
## p. 7704 (#518) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7704
how it will end. "Hard pounding, gentlemen: let's see who will
pound longest," the Duke is reported to have said at Waterloo,
and won.
"Now, Tummy, lad, 'tis thou or I," Big Ben said as
he came up to the last round of his hardest fight, and won. Is
there a man of that temper in either crew to-night? If so, now's
his time. For both coxswains have called on their men for the
last effort; Miller is whirling the tassel of his right-hand tiller
rope round his head, like a wiry little lunatic; from the towing-
path, from Christ Church meadow, from the rows of punts, from
the clustered tops of the barges, comes a roar of encouragement
and applause, and the band, unable to resist the impulse, breaks
with a crash into the 'Jolly Young Waterman,' playing two bars
to the second. A bump in the Gut is nothing-a few partisans
on the towing-path to cheer you, already out of breath; but up
here at the very finish, with all Oxford looking on, when the
prize is the headship of the river-once in a generation only do
men get such a chance.
Who ever saw Jervis not up to his work? The St. Ambrose
stroke is glorious. Tom had an atom of go still left in the very
back of his head, and at this moment he heard Drysdale's view
halloo above all the din: it seemed to give him a lift, and other
men besides in the boat, for in another six strokes the gap is
lessened and St. Ambrose has crept up to ten feet, and now to
five, from the stern of Oriel. Weeks afterward Hardy confided
to Tom that when he heard that view halloo he seemed to feel
the muscles of his arms and legs turn into steel, and did more
work in the last twenty strokes than in any other forty in the
earlier part of the race.
Another fifty yards and Oriel is safe; but the look on the
captain's face is so ominous that their coxswain glances over his
shoulder. The bow of St. Ambrose is within two feet of their
rudder. It is a moment for desperate expedients. He pulls his
left tiller rope suddenly, thereby carrying the stern of his own
boat out of the line of the St. Ambrose, and calls on his crew
once more: they respond gallantly yet, but the rudder is against
them for a moment, and the boat drags. St. Ambrose overlaps.
"A bump, a bump! " shout the St. - Ambrosians or shore. "Row
on, row on! " screams Miller. He has not yet felt the electric
shock, and knows he will miss his bump if the young ones slacken
for a moment. A young coxswain would have gone on making
shots at the stern of the Oriel boat, and so have lost.
## p. 7705 (#519) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7705
A ump now and no mistake: the bow of the St. Ambrose
boat jams the oar of the Oriel stroke, and the two boats pass the
winning-post with the way that was on them when the bump
was made. So near a shave was it.
To describe the scene on the bank is beyond me. It was a
hurly-burly of delirious joy, in the midst of which took place a
terrific combat between Jack and the Oriel dog,—a noble black
bull terrier belonging to the college in general, and no one in
particular, who always attended the races and felt the misfortune.
keenly. Luckily, they were parted without worse things happen-
ing; for though the Oriel men were savage, and not disinclined
for a jostle, the milk of human kindness was too strong for the
moment in their adversaries, and they extricated themselves from
the crowd, carrying off Crib, their dog, and looking straight
before them into vacancy.
-
"Well rowed, boys," says Jervis, turning round to his crew,
as they lay panting on their oars.
"Well rowed, five," says Miller, who, even in the hour of
such a triumph, is not inclined to be general in laudation.
"Well rowed, five," is echoed from the bank; it is that cun-
ning man, the recruiting sergeant. "Fatally well rowed," he
adds to a comrade, with whom he gets into one of the punts to
cross to Christ Church meadow: "we must have him in the Uni-
versity crew. "
"I don't think you'll get him to row, from what I hear,"
answers the other.
"Then he must be handcuffed and carried into the boat by
force," says the coxswain O. U. B. : "why is not the press gang
an institution in this university? "
THE FIGHT BETWEEN TOM BROWN AND WILLIAMS
From Tom Brown's School Days'
TOM
Oм felt he had got his work cut out for him, as he stripped
off his jacket, waistcoat, and braces. East tied his hand-
kerchief round his waist, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves
for him.
"Now, old boy, don't you open your mouth to say a word, or
try to help yourself a bit,—we'll do all that: you keep all your
breath and strength for the Slogger. "
## p. 7706 (#520) ###########################################
7706
THOMAS HUGHES
1
Martin meanwhile folded the clothes, and put them under the
chapel rails; and now Tom, with East to handle him and Martin
to give him a knee, steps out on the turf and is ready for all
that may come; and here is the Slogger too, all stripped, and
thirsting for the fray.
It doesn't look a fair match at first glance. Williams is nearly
two inches taller and probably a long year older than his oppo-
nent, and he is very strongly made about the arms and shoul-
ders; "peels well," as the little knot of big fifth-form boys, the
´amateurs, say,-who stand outside the ring of little boys, looking
complacently on but taking no active part in the proceedings.
But down below he is not so good by any means: no spring
from the loins, and feeblish, not to say shipwrecky, about the
knees. Tom, on the contrary, though not half so strong in the
arms, is good all over; straight, hard, and springy from neck to
ankle, better perhaps in his legs than anywhere. Besides, you
can see by the clear white of his eye and fresh bright look of
his skin that he is in tiptop training, able to do all he knows;
while the Slogger looks rather sodden, as if he didn't take much
exercise and eat too much tuck. The time-keeper is chosen, a
large ring made, and the two stand up opposite each other for
a moment, giving us time just to make our little observations.
"If Tom'll only condescend to fight with his head and heels,"
as East mutters to Martin, "we shall do. "
But seemingly he won't, for there he goes in, making play
with both hands. Hard all, is the word: the two stand to each
other like men; rally follows rally in quick succession, each fight-
ing as if he thought to finish the whole thing out of hand.
"Can't last at this rate," say the knowing ones, while the par-
tisans of each make the air ring with their shouts and counter-
shouts of encouragement, approval, and defiance.
"Take it easy, take it easy-keep away, let him come after
you," implores East, as he wipes Tom's face after the first round,
with wet sponge; while he sits back on Martin's knee, supported
by the Madman's long arms, which tremble a little from excite-
ment.
"Time's up! " calls the time-keeper.
"There he goes again, hang it all! " growls East, as his man
is at it again as hard as ever.
A very severe round follows, in which Tom gets out-and-out
the worst of it, and is at last hit clean off his legs and deposited
on the grass by a right-hander from the Slogger.
## p. 7707 (#521) ###########################################
THOMAS HUGHES
7707
Loud shouts rise from the boys of Slogger's house, and the
schoolhouse are silent and vicious, ready to pick quarrels any-
where.
"Two to one in half-crowns on the big 'un," says Rattle, one
of the amateurs, a tall fellow, in thunder-and-lightning waistcoat,
and puffy, good-natured face.
"Done! " says Groove, another amateur of quieter look, taking
out his note-book to enter it-for our friend Rattle sometimes
forgets these little things.
Meantime East is freshening up Tom with the sponges for
next round, and has set two other boys to rub his hands.
"Tom, old boy," whispers he, "this may be fun for you, but
it's death to me. He'll hit all the fight out of you in another
five minutes, and then I shall go and drown myself in the island
ditch. Feint him use your legs! - draw him about! he'll lose
his wind then in no time, and you can go into him. Hit at his
body, too; we'll take care of his frontispiece by-and-by. "
Tom felt the wisdom of the counsel, and saw already that he
couldn't go in and finish the Slogger off at mere hammer-and-
tongs, so changed his tactics completely in the third round. He
now fights cautious, getting away from and parrying the Slogger's
lunging hits, instead of trying to counter, and leading his enemy
a dance all round the ring after him.
"He's funking: go in, Williams! " "Catch him up! "
him off! " scream the small boys of the Slogger party.
"Just what we want," thinks East, chuckling to himself, as
he sees Williams, excited by these shouts, and thinking the
game in his own hands, blowing himself in his exertions to get
to close quarters again, while Tom is keeping away with perfect
ease.
"Finish
They quarter over the ground again and again, Tom always
on the defensive.
The Slogger pulls up at last for a moment, fairly blown.
"Now then, Tom," sings out East, dancing with delight.
Tom goes in in a twinkling, and hits two heavy body blows,
and gets away again before the Slogger can catch his wind;
which when he does he rushes with blind fury at Tom, and
being skillfully parried and avoided, overreaches himself and falls
on his face, amid terrific cheers from the schoolhouse boys.
"Double your two to one? " says Groove to Rattle, note-book
in hand.
## p. 7708 (#522) ###########################################
7708
THOMAS HUGHES
"Stop a bit,” says that hero, looking uncomfortably at Will-
iams, who is puffing away on his second's knee, winded enough,
but little the worse in any other way.
After another round the Slogger too seems to see that he can't
go in and win right off, and has met his match or thereabouts.
So he too begins to use his head, and tries to make Tom lose
patience and come in before his time. And so the fight sways
on, now one and now the other getting a trifling pull.
It is grim earnest now, and no mistake. Both boys feel this,
and summon every power of head, hand, and eye to their aid.
A piece of luck on either side, a foot slipping, a blow getting
well home, or another fall, may decide it. Tom works slowly
round for an opening; he has all the legs, and can choose his
own time: the Slogger waits for the attack, and hopes to finish
it by some heavy right-handed blow. As they quarter slowly
over the ground, the evening sun comes out from behind a cloud
and falls full on Williams's face. Tom darts in; the heavy right
hand is delivered, but only grazes his head. A short rally at
close quarters, and they close; in another moment the Slogger is
thrown again heavily for the third time.
"I'll give you three to two on the little one in half-crowns,”
said Groove to Rattle.
"No, thank 'ee," answers the other, diving his hands further
into his coat-tails.
Just at this stage of the proceedings the door of the turret
which leads to the doctor's library suddenly opens, and he steps
into the close and makes straight for the ring, in which Brown
and the Slogger are both seated on their seconds' knees for the
last time.
"The doctor! the doctor! " shouts some small boy who catches
sight of him; and the ring melts away in a few seconds, the
small boys tearing off, Tom collaring his jacket and waistcoat
and slipping through the little gate by the chapel, and round the
corner to Harrowell's with his backers, as lively as need be;
Williams and his backers making off not quite so fast across
the close; Groove, Rattle, and the other bigger fellows trying to
combine dignity and prudence in a comical manner, and walk-
ing off fast enough, they hope, not to be recognized, and not fast
enough to look like running away.
## p. 7708 (#523) ###########################################
## p. 7708 (#524) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO.
## p. 7708 (#525) ###########################################
#7
•
VICTOR HI GO
41 218851
BY ADOLI
TOR MARIE HUN Way's fenti
one, onacly the grow to subito raty Pe
France. By almost universal conser
greatest French poet; he is one of the greater
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of France; which, having b dom od te
with all their possesioas to the En
and grandson by his father of D
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çon did not return to France
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two years old.
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of the month of Ventése, in the
His father, Joseph Lacch
of the Republie, later rose to the
Bonaparte, brother of Nap Zeon, first to Nazio
when Joseph relu *antly gave up the crown
King of Spain; an1 died in the year 1828, x
armies of Louis XVIII. , King of France. Thes
and was ardently defended and as at lently att.
leader in that literary and artistic revoltron v
name of manticism.
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## p. 7708 (#526) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO.
6397
## p. 7709 (#527) ###########################################
7709
VICTOR HUGO
·
(1802-1885)
BY ADOLPHE COHN
ICTOR MARIE HUGO, always mentioned as Victor Hugo, is un-
questionably the greatest literary figure of nineteenth-century
France. By almost universal consent he is recognized as the
greatest French poet; he is one of the greater poets of the world.
His birthplace was Besançon, an old town and fortress of the East
of France; which, having belonged to the Dukes of Burgundy, passed
with all their possessions to the Emperor Charles V. , King of Spain,
and grandson by his father of Duchess Mary of Burgundy, the only
child of the celebrated Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold. Besan-
çon did not return to France until 1677, when it was ceded to King
Louis XIV. by the treaty of Nimeguen. This explains how, in a kind
of autobiographical poem, Hugo could call the city of his birth "an
old Spanish town. " In the same poem he says: "The century was
two years old.
Already, under Bonaparte, Napoleon was ap-
pearing. " Thus he states the year of his birth, and the political con-
dition of France when he first saw the light of day, on February 26th,
1802,- or, according to the calendar then in use, on the seventh day
of the month of Ventôse, in the year Ten of the French Republic.
His father, Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo, a major in the service
of the Republic, later rose to the rank of general; accompanied Joseph
Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon, first to Naples and then to Madrid,
when Joseph reluctantly gave up the crown of Naples for the title of
King of Spain; and died in the year 1828, a lieutenant-general in the
armies of Louis XVIII. , King of France. The son was already famous,
and was ardently defended and as ardently attacked as the foremost
leader in that literary and artistic revolution which has received the
name of Romanticism.
He was still very young, only twenty-six, but his name had been
before the public for six years, - his first volume of verse, 'Odes and
Diverse Poems,' having appeared in 1822. From the beginning, read-
ers had been struck by the passionate fervor, the dazzling color, the
splendid imagery, and the magnificent rhythm of his lyric utterances.
Most of these were qualities that French poetry had not known be-
fore, at least till the publication of Lamartine's first 'Meditations' in
1820; and their appearance in Hugo's first productions is, at least
partly, to be ascribed to the circumstances of his education.
## p. 7710 (#528) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7710
To a certain extent he had shared his father's wandering exist-
ence. With his mother and brothers he had left Paris, where the
family had come after leaving Besançon, and joined General Hugo in
Madrid; there he became a boarding pupil in an institution reserved
for the children of Spanish noblemen, among whom he was entitled
to be educated on account of the title of "count" granted to his
father by King Joseph. The disasters that overtook the French in
Spain compelled the Hugo family to seek safety in flight, and soon
he was in Paris again. One morning his mother stopped him in front
of a poster announcing that a number of officers concerned in the
almost successful plot of General Malet to overthrow Napoleon, had
been court-martialed and shot in the plains of Grenelle. In the list,
Madame Hugo directed her son Victor's attention to one name, that
of General Laboise; adding simply these words: "He was your god-
father. " In fact, Laboise had been more than a godfather to young
Victor and his brothers. While they were living in a part of the old
convent of the Feuillantines, he, proscribed and compelled to hide,
had one day mysteriously appeared, and had soon become the boys'
chief instructor. Then he had as mysteriously disappeared, soon to
end his life by the bullets of the executing platoon. Upon a mind
gifted with remarkable receptivity, upon an imagination which trans-
formed everything into a visible picture, upon an eye which seized
small details and absorbed color with lightning rapidity, such scenes,
such dramas, such contrasts, could not fail to produce the deepest
impression.
These gifts were, however, not the first that manifested themselves
when the youth began to pass from impression to expression. His
mastery of words, his power of verbal combination, is the only one of
his great characteristics which is visible in his first poetical outpour-
ings. The old classical school of French poetry was then dying a
lingering death; like those rivers which, after carrying a majestic
and beneficent flow of water through magnificent landscapes, finally
turn into myriads of small rivulets soon absorbed by barren sands.
The poetical forms that had been so powerful in the hands of Cor-
neille and Racine, now handled by inferior writers possessing depth
neither of thought nor of feeling, were gradually destroyed under a
heap of barren periphrases and circumlocutions. To hint instead of
naming, to use twenty words when one would have sufficed, seemed
to be the highest achievement of these writers; and good Abbé
Delille came to be considered a great poet. Young Hugo first fol-
lowed in the footsteps of the so-called great man of his time, and
thus won a number of prizes in the poetical competitions of his early
years.
The catastrophes in which Napoleon's power disappeared, the
strange events which accompanied and followed the restoration of
## p. 7711 (#529) ###########################################
VICTOR HUGO
7711
the Bourbons to the throne of France, soon gave to his poetry a more
serious tone. To him, as to every lover of French poetry, the success
of Lamartine's 'Meditations' was a revelation, a beacon showing new
pathways to greatness. Not simply general ideas, but individual
thought and personal emotion, were seen to be legitimate subjects.
for poetical treatment.
