An Autobiography of Anthony TrollopeTrollope, Anthony
General
An Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
Trollope, Anthony
Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882
entitled to a country house, as well as to that in Keppel Street; and
in order that he might build such a residence, he took the farm. This
place he called Julians, and the land runs up to the foot of the hill
on which the school and church stand,--on the side towards London.
Things there went much against him; the farm was ruinous, and I
remember that we all regarded the Lord Northwick of those days as a
cormorant who was eating us up. My father's clients deserted him. He
purchased various dark gloomy chambers in and about Chancery Lane,
and his purchases always went wrong. Then, as a final crushing blow,
an old uncle, whose heir he was to have been, married and had a
family! The house in London was let; and also the house he built at
Harrow, from which he descended to a farmhouse on the land, which
I have endeavoured to make known to some readers under the name of
Orley Farm. This place, just as it was when we lived there, is to
be seen in the frontispiece to the first edition of that novel,
having had the good fortune to be delineated by no less a pencil than
that of John Millais.
[Footnote 1: A pupil of his destroyed himself in the rooms.]
My two elder brothers had been sent as day-boarders to Harrow School
from the bigger house, and may probably have been received among the
aristocratic crowd,--not on equal terms, because a day-boarder at
Harrow in those days was never so received,--but at any rate as other
day-boarders. I do not suppose that they were well treated, but I
doubt whether they were subjected to the ignominy which I endured. I
was only seven, and I think that boys at seven are now spared among
their more considerate seniors. I was never spared; and was not even
allowed to run to and fro between our house and the school without a
daily purgatory. No doubt my appearance was against me. I remember
well, when I was still the junior boy in the school, Dr. Butler,
the head-master, stopping me in the street, and asking me, with all
the clouds of Jove upon his brow and all the thunder in his voice,
whether it was possible that Harrow School was disgraced by so
disreputably dirty a little boy as I! Oh, what I felt at that
moment! But I could not look my feelings. I do not doubt that I was
dirty;--but I think that he was cruel. He must have known me had he
seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging
me constantly. Perhaps he did not recognise me by my face.
At this time I was three years at Harrow; and, as far as I can
remember, I was the junior boy in the school when I left it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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