Doctor Birch and His Young Friends

1840.

DOCTOR BIRCH.

THE DOCTOR AND HIS STAFF.

|There is no need to say why I became Assistant Master and Professor of the English and French languages, flower-painting, and the German flute, in Doctor Birch's Academy, at Rodwell Regis. Good folks may depend on this that there was good reason for my leaving lodgings near London, and a genteel society, for an under-master's desk in that old school. I promise you, the fare at the Usher's table, the getting up at five o'clock in the morning, the walking out with little boys in the fields, (who used to play me tricks, and never could be got to respect my awful and responsible character as teacher in the school,) Miss Birch's vulgar insolence, Jack Birch's glum condescension, and the poor old Doctor's patronage, were not matters in themselves pleasurable: and that that patronage and those dinners were sometimes cruel hard to swallow. Never mind--my connexion with the place is over now, and I hope they have got a more efficient under-master.

Jack Birch (Rev. J. Birch, of St. Neot's Hall, Oxford,) is partner with his father the Doctor, and takes some of the classes. About his Greek I can't say much; but I will construe him in Latin any day. A more supercilious little prig, (giving himself airs, too, about his cousin, Miss Baby, who lives with the Doctor,) a more empty pompous little coxcomb I never saw. His white neckcloth looked as if it choked him. He used to try and look over that starch upon me and Prince the assistant, as if we were a couple of footmen. He didn't do much business in the school; but occupied his time in writing sanctified letters to the boys' parents, and in composing dreary sermons to preach to them.

The real master of the school is Prince; an Oxford man too: shy, haughty, and learned; crammed with Greek and a quantity of useless learning; uncommonly kind to the small boys; pitiless with the fools and the braggarts: respected of all for his honesty, his learning, his bravery, (for he hit out once in a boat-row in a way which astonished the boys and the bargemen,) and for a latent power about him, which all saw and confessed somehow. Jack Birch could never look him in the face. Old Miss Z. dared not put off any of her airs upon him. Miss Rosa made him the lowest of curtsies. Miss Raby said she was afraid of him. Good old Prince! many a pleasant night we have smoked in the Doctor's harness-room, whither we retired when our boys were gone to bed, and our cares and canes put by.

After Jack Birch had taken his degree at Oxford--a process which he effected with great difficulty--this place, which used to be called "Birch's," "Dr. Birch's Academy," and what not, became suddenly "Archbishop Wigsby's College of Rodwell Regis." They took down the old blue board with the gold letters, which has been used to mend the pig- stye since. Birch had a large school-room run up in the Gothic taste, with statuettes, and a little belfry, and a bust of Archbishop Wigsby in the middle of the school. He put the six senior boys into caps and gowns, which had rather a good effect as the lads sauntered down the street of the town, but which certainly provoked the contempt and hostility of the bargemen; and so great was his rage for academic costumes and ordinances, that he would have put me myself into a lay gown, with red knots and fringes, but that I flatly resisted, and said that a writing-master had no business with such paraphernalia.

By the way, I have forgotten to mention the Doctor himself. And what shall I say of him? Well, he has a very crisp gown and bands, a solemn air, a tremendous loud voice, and a grand and solemn air with the boys' parents, whom he receives in a study, covered round with the best bound books, which imposes upon many--upon the women especially--and makes them fancy that this is a Doctor indeed. But, Law bless you! He never reads the books; or opens one of them, except that in which he keeps his bands--and a Dugdale's Monasticon, which looks like a book, but is in reality a cupboard, where he has his almond cakes, and decanter of port wine. He gets up his classics with translations, or what the boys call cribs. They pass wicked tricks upon him when he hears the forms. The elder wags go to his study, and ask him to help them in hard bits of Herodotus or Thucydides: he says he will look over the passage, and flies for refuge to Mr. Prince, or to the crib.

He keeps the flogging department in his own hands; finding that his son was too savage. He has awful brows and a big voice. But his roar frightens nobody. It is only a lion's skin, or, so to say, a muff.

Little Mordant made a picture of him with large ears, like a well-known domestic animal, and had his own justly boxed for the caricature. The Doctor discovered him in the fact, and was in a flaming rage, and threatened whipping at first; but in the course of the day an opportune basket of game arriving from Mordant's father, the Doctor became mollified, and has burnt the picture with the ears. However I have one wafered up in my desk by the hand of the same little rascal: and the frontispiece of this very book is drawn from it.

THE COCK OF THE SCHOOL.

|I am growing an old fellow--and have seen many great folks in the course of my travels and time--Louis Philippe coming out of the Tuileries, His Majesty the King of Prussia and the Reichsverweser accolading each other, at Cologne, at my elbow; Admiral Sir Charles Napier (in an omnibus once), the Duke of Wellington, the immortal Goethe at Weimar, the late benevolent Pope Gregory XVI., and a score more of the famous in this world--the whom, whenever one looks at, one has a mild shock of awe and tremor. I like this feeling and decent fear and trembling with which a modest spirit salutes a Great Man.

Well, I have seen Generals capering on horseback at the head of their crimson battalions; Bishops sailing down cathedral aisles, with downcast eyes, pressing their trencher caps to their hearts with their fat white hands; College heads when her Majesty is on a visit; the Doctor in all his glory at the head of his school on Speech-day, a great sight,--and all great men these.

I have never met the late Mr. Thomas Cribb, but I have no doubt should have regarded him with the same feeling of awe with which I look every day at George Champion, the cock of Dr. Birch's school.

When, I say, I reflect as I go up and set him a sum, that he could whop me in two minutes, double up Prince and the other assistant, and pitch the Doctor out of window, I can't but think how great, how generous, how magnanimous a creature this is, that sits quite quiet and good-natured, and works his equation, and ponders through his Greek play. He might take the schoolroom pillars and pull the house down if he liked. He might close the door, and demolish every one of us like Antar, the lover of Ibla; but he lets us live. He never thrashes anybody without a cause, when woe betide the tyrant or the sneak!

I think that to be strong, and able to whop everybody,--(not to do it, mind you, but to feel that you were able to do it,)--would be the greatest of all gifts. There is a serene good humour which plays about George Champion's broad face, which shows the consciousness of this power, and lights up his honest blue eyes with a magnanimous calm.

He is invictus. Even when a cub there was no beating this lion. Six years ago the undaunted little warrior actually stood up to Frank Davison,--(the Indian officer now--poor little Charley's brother, whom Miss Raby nursed so affectionately,)--then seventeen years old, and the cock of Birch's. They were obliged to drag off the boy, and Frank, with admiration and regard for him, prophesied the great things he would do. Legends of combats are preserved fondly in schools; they have stories of such at Rodwell Regis, performed in the old Doctor's time, forty years ago.

Champion's affair with the Young Tutbury Pet, who was down here in training,--with Black the Bargeman,--with the three head boys of Doctor Wapshot's academy, whom he caught maltreating an outlying day-boy of ours, &c.,--are known to all the Rodwell Regis men. He was always victorious. He is modest and kind, like all great men. He has a good, brave, honest understanding. He cannot make verses like young Pinder, or read Greek like Lawrence the Prefect, who is a perfect young abyss of learning, and knows enough, Prince says, to furnish any six first-class men; but he does his work in a sound, downright way, and he is made to be the bravest of soldiers, the best of country parsons, an honest English gentleman wherever he may go.

Like all great men, George is good-humoured and lazy. There is a particular bench in the play-ground on which he will loll for hours on half-holidays, and is so affable that the smallest boys come and speak to him. It is pleasant to see the young cubs frisking round the honest lion. His chief friend and attendant, however, is young Jack Hall, whom he saved when drowning, out of the Miller's Pool. The attachment of the two is curious to witness. The smaller lad gambolling, playing tricks round the bigger one, and perpetually making fun of his protector. They are never far apart, and of holidays you may meet them miles away from the school. George sauntering heavily down the lanes with his big stick, and little Jack larking with the pretty girls in the cottage windows.

George has a boat on the river, in which, however, he commonly lies smoking, whilst Jack sculls him. He does not play at cricket, except when the school plays the county, or at Lord's in the holidays. The boys can't stand his bowling, and when he hits, it is like trying to catch a cannon-ball. I have seen him at tennis. It is a splendid sight to behold the young fellow bounding over the court with streaming yellow hair, like young Apollo in a flannel jacket.

The other head boys are Lawrence the Captain, Bunce, famous chiefly for his magnificent appetite, and Pitman, sur-named Roscius, for his love of the drama. Add to these Swanky, called Macassar, from his partiality to that condiment, and who has varnished boots, wears white gloves on Sundays, and looks out for Miss Pinkerton's school (transferred from Chiswick to Rodwell Regis, and conducted by the nieces of the late Miss Barbara Pinkerton, the friend of Our Great Lexicograplier, upon the principles approved by him and practised by that admirable woman,) as it passes into church.

Representations have been made concerning Mr. Horace Swanky's behaviour; rumours have been uttered about notes in verse, conveyed in three-cornered puffs, by Mrs. Buggies, who serves Miss Pinkerton's young ladies on Fridays--and how Miss Didow, to whom the tart and enclosure were addressed, tried to make away with herself by swallowing a ball of cotton. But I pass over these absurd reports, as likely to affect the reputation of an admirable Seminary conducted by irreproachable females. As they go into church (Miss P. driving in her flock of lambkins with the crook of her parasol,) how can it be helped if her forces and ours sometimes collide, as the boys are on their way up to the organ-loft? And I don't believe a word about the three-cornered puff, but rather that it was the invention of that jealous Miss Birch, who is jealous of Miss Raby, jealous of everybody who is good and handsome, and who has her own ends in view, or I am very much in error.