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THOMAS HUGHES

Tom Brown’s Schooldays

“Tom Brown’s Schooldays” has been called by more than one critic the best story of schoolboy life ever written, and three generations of readers have endorsed the opinion.  Its author, Thomas Hughes, born at Uffington, Berkshire, England, Oct. 19, 1822, was himself, like his hero, both a Rugby boy under Dr. Arnold and the son of a Berkshire squire, but he denied that the story was in any real sense autobiographical.  Matthew Arnold and Arthur H. Clough, the poet, were Hughes’s friends at school, and in later life he became associated with Charles Kingsley and Frederick Denison Maurice on what was called the Christian Socialist movement.  A barrister by profession, Thomas Hughes became a county court judge, and lived for many years in that capacity at Chester.  Besides “Tom Brown’s Schooldays,” published in 1857, Hughes also wrote “Tom Brown at Oxford” (1861), biographies of Livingstone, Bishop Fraser, and Daniel Macmillan, and a number of political, religious and social pamphlets.  He died on March 22, 1896.

I.—­Tom Goes to Rugby

Squire Brown, J.P. for the county of Berks, dealt out justice and mercy, in a thorough way, and begat sons and daughters, and hunted the fox, and grumbled at the badness of the roads and the times.  And his wife dealt out stockings and shirts and smock frocks, and comforting drinks to the old folks with the “rheumatiz,” and good counsel to all.

Tom was their eldest child, a hearty, strong boy, from the first given to fighting with and escaping from his nurse, and fraternising with all the village boys, with whom he made expeditions all round the neighbourhood.

Squire Brown was a Tory to the backbone; but, nevertheless, held divers social principles not generally supposed to be true blue in colour; the foremost of which was the belief that a man is to be valued wholly and solely for that which he is himself, apart from all externals whatever.  Therefore, he held it didn’t matter a straw whether his son associated with lords’ sons or ploughmen’s sons, provided they were brave and honest.  So he encouraged Tom in his intimacy with the village boys, and gave them the run of a close for a playground.  Great was the grief among them when Tom drove off with the squire one morning, to meet the coach, on his way to Rugby, to school.

It had been resolved that Tom should travel down by the Tally-ho, which passed through Rugby itself; and as it was an early coach, they drove out to the Peacock Inn, at Islington, to be on the road.  Towards nine o’clock, the squire, observing that Tom was getting sleepy, sent the little fellow off to bed, with a few parting words, the result of much thought.

“And now, Tom, my boy,” said the squire, “remember you are going, at your own earnest request, to be chucked into this great school, like a young bear, with all your troubles before you—­earlier than we should have sent you, perhaps.  You’ll see a great many cruel blackguard things done, and hear a deal of foul, bad talk.  But never fear.  You tell the truth, and keep a brave, kind heart, and never listen to or say anything you wouldn’t have your mother or sister hear, and you’ll never feel ashamed to come home, or we to see you.”