On the first Sunday after my arrival at school, I arrayed myself with great satisfaction in a big, floppy collar, and my new velvet tunic, amidst the loud jeers of all the other boys in the dormitory.  I was, however, hardly prepared for the yells and howls of derision with which my appearance in the school-room was greeted; my unfortunate garments were held to be so unspeakably grotesque that boys laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks.  As church-time approached the boys produced their high hats, which I found were worn even by little fellows of eight; I had nothing but my terrible tasselled velvet cap, the sight of which provoked even louder jeers than the tunic had done.  We marched to church two and two, in old-fashioned style in a “crocodile,” but not a boy in the school would walk beside me in my absurd garments, so a very forlorn little fellow trotted to church alone behind the usher, acutely conscious of the very grotesque figure he was presenting.  I must have been dressed very much as Henry Fairchild was when he went to visit his little friend Master Noble.  On returning from church, I threw my velvet cap into the water-butt, where, for all I know, it probably is still, and nothing would induce me to put on the velvet tunic or the floppy collars a second time.  I bombarded my family with letters until I found myself equipped with a high hat and Eton jackets and collars such as the other boys wore.

We were taught French at Chittenden’s by a very pleasant old Belgian, M. Vansittart.  I could talk French then as easily as English, and after exchanging a few sentences with M. Vansittart, he cried, “Tiens! mais c’est un petit Francais;” but the other boys laughed so unmercifully at what they termed my affected accent, that in self-defence I adopted an ultra-British pronunciation, made intentional mistakes, and, in order to conform to type, punctiliously addressed our venerable instructor as “Moosoo,” just as the other boys did.  M. Vansittart must have been a very old man, for he had fought as a private in the Belgian army at the Battle of Waterloo.  He had once been imprudent enough to admit that he and some Belgian friends of his had...how shall we put it?...absented themselves from the battlefield without the permission of their superiors, and had hurriedly returned to Brussels, being doubtless fatigued by their exertions.  His little tormentors never let him forget this.  When we thought that we had done enough French for the day, a shrill young voice would pipe out, “Now, Moosoo, please tell us how you and all the Belgians ran away from the Battle of Waterloo.”  It never failed to achieve the desired end.  “Ah! tas de petits sacripants!  ’Ow dare you say dat?” thundered the poor old gentleman, and he would go on to explain that his and his friends’ retirement was only actuated by the desire to be the first bearers to Brussels of the news of Wellington’s great victory, and to assuage their families’ very natural anxiety as to their safety.  He added, truthfully enough, “Nos jambes courraient malgres nous.”  Poor M. Vansittart!  He was a gentle and a kindly old man, with traces of the eighteenth-century courtliness of manner, and smothered in snuff.