Under Tom’s care I quickly mastered my reading, writing, and numbers; and, on the firm foundations thus laid down, he encouraged me to build according to my own inclinations. Every subject, and every topic within every subject, to which Tom introduced me assailed me with a keen hunger to know more. In this way, my mind began to fill up with prodigious amounts of undigested information on every conceivable topic, from the principles of Archimedes to the date of the creation of the world according to Archbishop Ussher.*
Gradually, however, Tom began to impose some rigour on this habit of mental acquisitiveness. I settled down to gain a thorough mastery of the Greek and Latin tongues, as well as a solid grounding in history, and the main vernacular literatures of Europe. Tom was also a dedicated bibliophile, though his attempts to assemble a collection of fine editions of his own were severely curtailed by his always limited means. Still, his knowledge and connoisseurship in this area were considerable, and it was from him that I learned about incunabula and colophons, bindings and dentelles, editions and issues, and all the other minutiae beloved of the bibliographical scholar.
And so things went on until I reached the age of twelve, at which point my life changed.
On the day of my twelfth birthday, in March 1832, I came down to breakfast to find my mother sitting at her work-table with a wooden box in her hands.
‘Happy birthday, Eddie.’ She smiled. ‘Come and kiss me.’
I did so most willingly, for I had seen little of her in recent days as she struggled to finish yet another work for Mr Colburn and his increasingly demanding deadlines.
‘This is for you, Eddie,’ she said quietly, holding out the box.
It was deep, hinged, about nine inches square, and made of a rich dark wood, with a band of lighter wood running round an inch or so above the base. The lid had raised angled sides and was inlaid on one of the faces with a coat of arms. Two little brass handles were set on each side, and on the front face was a shield-shaped escutcheon. For several years it stood on my mantel-piece in Temple-street.
‘Open it,’ my mother said gently.
Inside nestled two soft leather purses, each containing a large quantity of gold coins. I tumbled them out onto the table. They amounted to two hundred sovereigns.*
Naturally, I could not comprehend how so much money could suddenly find its way to us in this way, when my mother’s poor drawn face told so eloquently of what necessity required her to do, constantly and with no prospect of cessation, in order to keep our little family safe from want.
‘Where has all this money come from?’ I asked in astonishment. ‘Mamma, is it yours?’
‘No, my love,’ my mother replied, ‘it is yours, to do with as you like. A present from an old, old friend, who loved you very much, but who will never see you again. She wished for this to be given to you, so that you may know that she will think of you always.’
Now, the only friend of my mother’s that I could think of was sad-eyed Miss Lamb; and so for some years I cherished the belief, never contradicted by my mother, that she had been my benefactress. Unsure though I was of the source of my good fortune, however, the weight of the coins, as they lay in my cupped hands, had a powerful effect, for I instantly saw that they would allow me to set my mother free from her literary labours. But she refused to countenance such a thing, and with an affronted resoluteness that I had never seen in her before. After some discussion, it was agreed that the money, except for fifty sovereigns, which I insisted that she must have, would be placed into the hands of her Uncle More, for investment in such a way as he would see fit to produce profit on the sum, until I attained my majority.
‘There is more, Eddie,’ she said.
I was to go to school – to a real school, away from Sandchurch. This special friend of my mother’s, who had loved me very much, had wished for me to be educated as a foundation boy at Eton College on reaching the age of twelve, and had made arrangements to this effect. That time had now arrived. When the summer was over, and the leaves had fallen from the chestnut-tree by the front gate, if I had succeeded in the examination, I would become a Scholar of the King’s College of Our Lady of Eton Beside Windsor, founded by that most devout and unworldly of English monarchs, Henry VI. At first, I did not well know how I should contemplate this momentous change, either for good or ill; but Tom Grexby soon put me right. It was the very best thing that could have happened, he said, and he knew – no one better – that it would be the making of me.
‘Hold fast, Ned,’ he said, ‘to what we have done together, and go forward to greater things. Your life, your true life, is not here,’ – he pointed to his breast and to the heart beating within it —‘but here,’ pointing now to his head. ‘There is your kingdom,’ he said, ‘and it is yours to extend and enrich as you please, to the ends of the earth.’
The scholarship examination, taken that July, held no terrors for me, and a letter came soon afterwards with the gratifying intelligence that I had been placed first on the list. Tom and I spent the remainder of the summer reading hard together, and taking long walks along the cliffs in deep conversation about the subjects we both loved. And then the day came; Billick brought the trap round to the front gate, my cases were stowed, and I climbed up beside him. Tom had walked up from the village to see me off and give me a gift to take with me: a fine copy of Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus.* I stared in disbelieving delight to hold in my hands a volume that I had longed to read ever since Tom had set me to consider Hamlet’s celebrated contention to Horatio, on witnessing the appearance of his father’s ghost, that heaven and earth contain more things than we can dream of.*
‘A little addition to your philosophical library,’ he said, smiling. ‘But don’t tell your mamma – she might think I am corrupting your young mind. And be prepared, now, to be tested on it when you come home.’ At which he took my hand and shook it hard – the first time anyone had done such a thing. It impressed me strongly that I was no longer a child, but had become a man amongst men.
When all was ready, we waited in the bright and windy sunshine for my mother to come out from the house. When she did, I noticed that she was carrying something, which I soon saw was the box that had contained the two hundred sovereigns from her friend.
‘Take this, Eddie, to remind you of the dear lady who has made this possible. I know you will not let her down, and that you will work hard at your lessons, and become a very great scholar. You will write, won’t you, as soon as you can? And always remember that you are your mamma’s best boy.’
And then she took my hand, but she did not shake it, as Tom had done, but drew it to her lips and kissed it.
To Bella, I now told the story of my time as an Eton Colleger; but as it is necessary for the reader of these confessions to be apprised, in some detail, of the events relating to my time at the school, in particular the manner of my leaving it, I propose to describe them at a more suitable place in my narrative, together with the story of my life in the immediately succeeding years.
Bella listened attentively, occasionally getting up to walk over to the window as I spoke. When I had finished, she sat in thought for a moment.
‘You have said little concerning your present employment,’ she said suddenly. ‘Perhaps the answer lies there. I confess that I have never been quite clear in my mind what your duties are at Tredgolds.’