Here my schooling went on under somewhat improved
circumstances. The three miles became half a mile, and probably
some salutary changes were made in my wardrobe. My mother and
my sisters, too, were there. And a great element of happiness was
added to us all in the affectionate and life-enduring friendship
of the family of our close neighbour Colonel Grant. But I was never
able to overcome--or even to attempt to overcome--the absolute
isolation of my school position. Of the cricket-ground or racket-court
I was allowed to know nothing. And yet I longed for these things
with an exceeding longing. I coveted popularity with a covetousness
that was almost mean. It seemed to me that there would be an
Elysium in the intimacy of those very boys whom I was bound to hate
because they hated me. Something of the disgrace of my school-days
has clung to me all through life. Not that I have ever shunned to
speak of them as openly as I am writing now, but that when I have
been claimed as schoolfellow by some of those many hundreds who
were with me either at Harrow or at Winchester, I have felt that
I had no right to talk of things from most of which I was kept in
estrangement.
Through all my father's troubles he still desired to send me either
to Oxford or Cambridge. My elder brother went to Oxford, and Henry
to Cambridge.
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