Between The
Public Schoolboy And The Child There Is An Essential
Difference; And This In A Boy's Case Is Largely Due, I Fancy,
To The Diminished Influence Of Woman, And The Increased
Influence Of Men.
With me, certainly, the rough usage I was ere long to undergo
materially modified my view of things in general.
In 1838,
when I was eleven years old, my uncle, Henry Keppel, the
future Admiral of the Fleet, but then a dashing young
commander, took me (as he mentions in his Autobiography) to
the Naval Academy at Gosport. The very afternoon of my
admittance - as an illustration of the above remarks - I had
three fights with three different boys. After that the 'new
boy' was left to his own devices, - QUA 'new boy,' that is;
as an ordinary small boy, I had my share. I have spoken of
the starvation at Dr. Pinkney's; here it was the terrible
bullying that left its impress on me - literally its mark,
for I still bear the scar upon my hand.
Most boys, I presume, know the toy called a whirligig, made
by stringing a button on a loop of thread, the twisting and
untwisting of which by approaching and separating the hands
causes the button to revolve. Upon this design, and by
substituting a jagged disk of slate for the button, the
senior 'Bull-dogs' (we were all called 'Burney's bull-dogs')
constructed a very simple instrument of torture. One big boy
spun the whirligig, while another held the small boy's palm
till the sharp slate-edge gashed it.
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