{19}
School Punishments.—Asiastic Cholera in Hunts.—The First Photograph.—Removal to the New School at Epping, Essex.—Audacity Saved Them.—How I Left Epping School.—Coaching Incidents.—Some Discomforts of Coaching.—My Father, Potto Brown, and his Interest in the Education of the People.—A Sad Incident.—Boyhood of Well-known County Residents.—A Trying Ordeal.—A Boys’ Duel.—Boys and Their Mischief.
My punishments, as I have shown, were in connection with lessons. When I deserved I the rod, through good luck and caution combined, I always escaped, as the following two or three incidents will show.
The boys were forbidden to go off the premises. One dark evening (there was no gas), another boy and myself went to the north end of the town for nothing worse than a stroll. On coming back, getting near to the entrance gates of the school premises, near the confectioner’s shop, I suggested to my companion we should cross to the other side of the street, under the shadow of All Saints’ Church (I was always cautious), but he said I there was no danger. I, however, crossed {20} over; he did not, but ran right into the headmaster, who said, “Have you leave to be out?” He replied boldly, “Yes, sir.” The next question came, “Who gave you leave?” He hedged by saying, “Did you ask if I had leave? I misunderstood you the first time; No, I had not leave.” He was marched on to the premises by the master. I proceeded, undetected, went down the Grammar School Lane, and entered the School back-way, where I found my companion smarting under the castigation he had received for the double crime of going out of bounds without leave and telling a lie. He was vexed with me most unreasonably because he was caught and I escaped.
On another occasion a new boy had come to the school, so about half-a-dozen of us one evening took him into Princess Street, tied a string to him, and attached the other end to the knob of a front door bell. We then rang the bell and ran away. This boy ran also, and pulled, of course, the wire of the bell machinery down. The string must have also broken, as we escaped without detection.
At the end of 1831 the cholera had been gradually crossing the Continent of Europe, and in 1832 it became epidemic in this country, being first imported into Sunderland from Holland. It soon spread all over the country, and caused great loss of life. Locally, it was very bad at Wisbech, Upwell, Outwell, Nordelph, March, Chatteris, Somersham, St. Ives, Fenstanton, and especially Ramsey. I believe at Fenstanton, out of a {21} population of a thousand, one hundred persons died. In Ramsey it was so fatal that some persons would not visit the town to conduct their usual business, and in the town itself persons would forsake their children when attacked, and grown-up children would forsake their parents.
There were two cases in Wyton, and, owing to the authorities getting quick burial, then burning everything in the house, the disease did not spread. I believe there were no cases in Huntingdon.
It is singular that when cholera visited England again, in 1848, 1849, 1853, 1854, it did not attack Somersham, St. Ives, Fenstanton, or Ramsey.
Photography was introduced about 1838 to 1840. My first likeness was taken in 1840, when I was seventeen years of age. I retain it still (in 1896).
After leaving Huntingdon Grammar School I was sent to one at Epping, Essex. This was a more private School, kept by two gentlemen, one a member of the Society of Friends, the other a Churchman. The latter was an M.A. of the University of Oxford. It was a first-class school, all the boys but one being the sons of the wealthier members of the previously-named Religious Society. I had a far better experience here than at the Huntingdon Grammar School; my lessons were no more trouble to me to learn than they were to the other boys. Indeed, there were two other boys in the class with me {22} whom I frequently assisted to translate their Latin and French lessons. I once, while at this school, heard Elizabeth Fry preach at the Friends’ Meeting-house, which the school regularly attended.
On one occasion when I had failed to say a lesson, as was customary on such occasions, I was placed with two other boys under a lamp in the hall of the house (the school-room was detached from the house). The lamp was an oil one, and, when it began to burn low, the boys used to send a message to the master, “Are we to go to bed, or have the lamp re-filled?” The usual answer came, “Go to bed.” One night we thought we would get to bed early, so we took the lamp out of its glass case, unscrewed the cap of the reservoir, and poured all the oil on to a glossy white mat, which laid at the drawing-room door, sent the usual question to the master, and received the usual answer, “Go to bed.” We expected there would be a jolly row in the morning, but the very audacity of the affair saved us. We were not even suspected, but the servants were blamed for spilling the oil. While at this school, I, with my brother, Geo. Wm. Brown, was called by the Master into his private room in the house, and informed that my uncle, William Brown, had died after a few days’ illness; which illness, being brief, we had not even heard of. Perhaps this was the first great trial of my life; my uncle lived at my father’s, and managed the farm for Mr. Goodman and my father. My father being so much from home on business, I was {23} much more intimate with my uncle than with him. My uncle slept in the same bedroom with me, and I used to go with him on the farm, and was much attached to him, which made the blow a very severe one. I remember at the previous seeding-time, my uncle came in the dining-room one day to dinner, and said to my mother, “Seeding is over once more. I have finished, the sowing, who can tell if I shall see the reaping?” He died before the nest harvest.
My stay at this Epping School terminated very abruptly from the following cause: The master, who was a “Friend,” had married a short time before the holidays, and his wife was jealous of the popularity of the other master with the boys, compared with her husband, and it appears that after the school had gone home for the holidays they had agreed to dissolve partnership, so that we did not return to the school at Epping. The master was named Richard Abbatt; the other was named Thomas Usmar. The latter opened a school at Croydon, and took nearly all the boys with him.
This closes the second period of my school life.
Just before the introduction of railways, coach travelling had arrived at a state of great perfection, roads were good, high hills having been cut through, and the surface of the roads was in excellent order, notwithstanding what would be thought in 1905 of a so-called quick journey to London in the “Thirties” and beginning of the “Forties.” {24} My father, Potto Brown, who went to London every other Monday, was called at three o’clock in the morning, drove to Cambridge, which took about two hours, the coach leaving the “Hoop” Hotel, Cambridge, at six, and arriving in London at 12 or one o’clock. The driver of this coach was a character. He would be on the box seat a few minutes before the clock struck six, and at the first stroke of the hour was off, waiting for no one. His coach was patronised chiefly by bankers, merchants, etc., who were anxious to be in London early. Therefore, the coachman, Joe Walton, especially studied them, and gave scant courtesy to ladies and gentlemen with heavy luggage.
One day when I, being only a big boy, was sitting on the front part of the coach, Walton was signalled by a gentleman, accompanied by his livery servant, to pull up, the gentleman saying, “Mr. Walton, have you room in front?” The front was full, and the reply came, “Get up behind, do you think I am going to nurse such a great calf as you all the way to London?” I think the gentleman came from the present Leys school, which was then a private mansion.
On another occasion Mr. Charles Tebbutt and myself were going from Cambridge to London. When we got off the coach at “Wade’s Mill” to breakfast, Walton said, “Mind you boys are back to the coach in time; I shall not wait for you.” We were up on the coach before he was, and we said, “Here we are, Mr. Walton,” expecting a {25} word of commendation, but he only said, “A good thing for you, or you would only have been left behind.” Walton was very strong in the arm; it is said on two occasions, when his horses were running away, he had broken a jaw in pulling them up. When the railway was opened to Broxbourne, the coach used to go on to the rail there on to a truck, and the inside passengers would remain in the coach. On the first occasion, Walton refused to get off the box, until they told him he would get his head taken off at the first arch. After the railway was opened to Cambridge, Walton used to go to London most days to take Messrs. Forster’s bankers’ parcel to town.
It is said that a Cambridge man in going out to India, met an acquaintance out there, and after mutual greetings were over, the first question put to the new arrival was “How is old Joe Walton?”
For more than a year after I commenced going to London on business, I travelled by the “Magnet” coach from the George Hotel, Huntingdon, and the coach took to the rail at Hertford.
I will give some of the discomforts of travelling then compared with now. Instead of a comfortable waiting-room, we went into the hotel tap-room; instead of foot warmers, we went into the stable and got ourselves some straw to put our feet in; when we got on the coach we had to be heavily clothed. I used to wear a pair of high cloth overalls with feet to them, lined with lambs’ wool, {26} also a great coachman’s coat, with five or six capes, and a stand-up collar to my ears, burying most of my face.
In connection with my first journey so equipped, I will mention the following amusing incident: My father had said to me before leaving home, “The coach does not profess to stop anywhere for breakfast, but while it is changing horses at Biggleswade, jump down as quick as you can, run to the bar, when you will find cups of hot coffee on the counter, snatch up a cup, lay the money down, and drink as fast as you can.” I acted my part to perfection, for the landlady stared at me and then said, “You are him.” “No, you are not him”; “Yes, you are him,” and then “I don’t know whether you are him or not.” “Well,” I said, “I am not him, but I am in his coat, and I am his son.”
Another inconvenience of coach-travelling was you had, to be sure of a seat, to book your seat one, two, or three days beforehand. You could not with any certainty start off on a journey at a moment’s notice—there was no telegraph. I have sometimes arrived at Huntingdon at 11 o’clock at night, and walked home to Houghton. My father before me, under similar circumstances, has arrived at Cambridge late, and walked home to Houghton (15 miles).
This closes the second period of my school life.
But it is a suitable place to make some allusion to the above subject. About a year or so before my leaving the Epping School, my {27} father and his partner, Mr. Joseph Goodman, had started a day school for the education of children of Houghton-cum-Wyton, in connection with the clergyman of the then united parishes; and a master and mistress, both members of the Church of England, were the teachers. They were Irish, and it appears some disagreement with the clergyman about the teaching of the Church catechism had arisen, a great revolution had taken place, and when I came home from Epping for the holidays, I found Mr. Sympson, the Church school master, dethroned, Mr. Francis Cross installed in his place, and Mr. Sympson carrying on the school in a new building in Wyton built by the clergyman. The original school, my father’s property, was occupied by Mr. Cross, and conducted on the method of the “British and Foreign School Society.” The clergyman’s school was carried on on the plan of the “National School System.” My father had consented, as an act of fairness to the clergyman, to give him time to build his own school before the final severance took place, so that both parties might start fair. I have recorded this educational matter here because it was at the time of my leaving the Epping School, and Mr. Francis Cross, whom I found on the scene when I arrived home from Epping, became a marked man in the parish. Indeed, I might say from an educational point of view, the “Father of the Parish.”
My father now decided not to send his two sons to boarding schools any more, but to educate my brother and myself at home under {28} a private tutor, and arranging to have other boys educated with us. Our first master had been educated for the Congregational Ministry, but, showing signs of pulmonary disease, he ceased to follow that profession, and became a tutor instead. I cannot give the exact date (now at once) of his advent, but I was about 14 years of age, which would make it about the year 1837. He was an unsuitable man for the post of schoolmaster, as he was “innocent” and “timid,” and not up to tricks and the pranks of a set of schoolboys. I have no opinion, on looking back, as to his capabilities, from a literary point of view, nor as to his fitness for the position. He was apparently a conscientious man, and I have no recollection of either liking or disliking him. He left rather suddenly, I think because he became attached to my aunt, Olivia Brown, and after looking at the matter from all points, she decided not to marry him. As events turned out, it proved a happy escape for her, provided his after life had not turned out different from what it was. I may as well finish his career here, as it was a melancholy one. Some time after leaving Houghton, he paid my father a visit, and borrowed a nag, and it afterwards turned out he proposed to the daughter of a clergyman, whom he eventually married. I lost sight of him for some years, when he turned up as curate, near Ely. He then had a considerable family of young girls, and appeared in very straitened circumstances. He had been living in Scotland. I believe while at the place near Ely, he drew a cheque on a bank where he had no account, {29} and so had to leave. He migrated to the neighbourhood of Maidstone, was committed to Maidstone Prison, and died there.
After our first tutor left, a Mr. John Watson held the office. I think, in addition to my brother, Fredk. Coote, a son of the late Mr. Wm. Coote, of St. Ives, was taught with us; Geo. Clark, a son of Mr. John Clark, of Houghton (for a short time); then Mr. Chas. Tebbutt, of Bluntisham, and Mr. Robt. Felkin, of Nottingham, a first cousin of Mr. Tebbutt’s.
Mr. Watson was also educated for the Congregational Ministry, but while at College, owing to some dispute with the authorities, he was requested to withdraw, and became a tutor instead of a minister. He was some sort of a protege of the Rev. T. Binney, of the Weigh House Chapel, London. He was well up to boys’ tricks. I presume he was well qualified to act as an instructor of youth, as regards his acquirements, but not as respects his disposition, for he was soured by the College incident, and was prejudiced against religious people generally, in fact, he was a regular misanthrope. He was a veritable genius; he could clean a clock, make a lady’s cap, sketch a landscape, and paint a likeness, etc. He had one great failing in the management of us, because on some disputed point about discipline, he would argue with us, and if he got the worst of the argument, would turn up angry. On the whole, as a tutor, I have now on looking back, no great fault to find with him. He occupied a difficult position, as he {30} had to please my mother as well as my father, and everyone knows that mothers are rather impatient of discipline inflicted by a comparative stranger on their offspring. As an American gentleman once said to me when in Switzerland, on seeing the death of one of his countrymen, “Peace to his ashes!”
While being taught under Mr. Watson, in order to teach us to speak in public, my father arranged for us to take up various questions for discussion, and after we had become proficient, he would invite several gentlemen of the neighbourhood to his house, and we had to perform before these gentlemen, which was a rather severe ordeal, but, as was intended, it had the effect of giving us confidence. On one of these occasions, the subject for discussion was the characters of Jacob and Esau. When we had finished the discussion, we asked for a half-holiday for the next day. Upon it being granted, the Rev. J. K. Holland said, “You have got more out of Jacob than his brother, Esau, ever did.”
One or two incidents: Fredk. Coote was a boy who, above everything else, liked to be correct, and to do the right thing. On one occasion, when riding on horseback together, he all at once found out my stirrup irons were a little rusty. He was much disgusted, and was ashamed to be riding with me. On another occasion, we had been ranging about the fields, and had got rather dirty perhaps, when, just as we were about to strike the St. Ives and Houghton footpath, he saw two ladies he knew. “Only think of the state I {31} am in,” he exclaimed; “those ladies are used to seeing me all right in costume, and I am accustomed to bow to them.” The reason I record these two little incidents, is because they lead up to another rather amusing one. We had a rather serious dispute over some matter; with an ordinary boy it would have led to a round or two with the fists until one or the other lad received sufficient punishment. Not so with Fred Coote; we must do the correct thing, and in every respect in the correct way, viz., fight a duel, but not with pistols. We retired to the field near our school, each of the combatants accompanied by his second to see fair play. The duel was to be with sticks, so we each cut a white or black thorn stick out of the hedge, and then placed ourselves, or were placed by our respective seconds, ready for the fray. Then at a given signal, we advanced up to each other, and each gave the other a severe castigation with the above mentioned thorns, until we both had had enough of it, and then left off by mutual consent, honour being satisfied. I think neither of us was considered by our seconds or the spectators to have received more punishment than the other, but, in fact, I, Bateman Brown, secured the most punishment, because unconsciously, while the seconds were arranging the preliminaries, having the knife in my hand with which I had cut the stick out of the hedge, I had amused myself in whittling the knots off my stick. Therefore my weapon did not inflict the same pain on my opponent as his did on me, with the thorns remaining on.
{32} As far as I can remember, this duel closed the dispute, and we were good friends afterwards. This boy, Fredk. Coote, was the younger brother of the late Eaden Coote, corn merchant, at St. Ives. He, Fred Coote, emigrated, I think, to Australia, and died there about the year 1893 or 1894. He came on a visit once to his old home, and was introduced to me by his brother in the street at St. Ives. I did not remember him.
We boys were a great annoyance to the neighbours who lived near our schoolroom. A Mr. Sharpe, who lived opposite, we used, when he was milking his cows in a barn back to the street, throw large stones at the shed, and so frighten the cows, and cause them to be likely to knock the pail over.
On one occasion we took a pailfull of water, attached a cord to it, tied the other end to the door handle, and then threw a large stone at the door. Events turned out exactly as we expected. Someone inside the room, quickly, in anger at the stone being thrown at the door, pulled the door open, knocking the pailfull of water all over herself, and flooding the living-room.
On another occasion, the eldest daughter, Eliza Sharpe, was to be married on the next day, and I took a pointed stick, charred it in the fire, and wrote with it on our window shutters, which were drab in colour, “Eliza Sharpe is going to be married to-morrow.” This way of announcing the happy event to the passers-by did not meet with the approval of the intended bridegroom, for he rushed out with a stick, and I only just suc-{33}ceeded in escaping into the schoolroom.
The good woman, Mrs. Ellis, who did the cleaning of our schoolroom, when we had been more troublesome than usual, would come to me, I suppose because I was the eldest, and say, “Mr. Beetman, the neighbours do say they must tell Master Potto, if you do not behave better.” Mrs. Ellis spoke Norfolk dialect and pronunciation.
I might say that Eliza Sharpe did not live long after her marriage, and was the first person buried in Houghton Chapelyard, and, I believe, Mrs. Joseph Goodman, the wife of my father’s partner, was the next.