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167 pages

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. The Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now matriculating at the universities. Notwithstanding the well-merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt- with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby- with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen- with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819932604
Langue	English

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TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS
By Thomas Hughes
PART I.
CHAPTER I—THE BROWN FAMILY
"I'm the Poet of White Horse Vale, sir,
With liberal notions under my cap. "— Ballad
The Browns have become illustrious by the pen ofThackeray and the pencil of Doyle, within the memory of the younggentlemen who are now matriculating at the universities.Notwithstanding the well-merited but late fame which has now fallenupon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel thatmuch has yet to be written and said before the British nation willbe properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to theBrowns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, theyhave been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leavingtheir mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever thefleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sonsof the Browns have done yeomen's work. With the yew bow andcloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt— with the brown bill andpike under the brave Lord Willoughby— with culverin anddemi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen— with hand-grenade andsabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfeand Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have carried their lives intheir hands, getting hard knocks and hard work in plenty— which wason the whole what they looked for, and the best thing for them— andlittle praise or pudding, which indeed they, and most of us, arebetter without. Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs, and such-likefolk, have led armies and made laws time out of mind; but thosenoble families would be somewhat astounded— if the accounts evercame to be fairly taken— to find how small their work for Englandhas been by the side of that of the Browns.
These latter, indeed, have, until the presentgeneration, rarely been sung by poet, or chronicled by sage. Theyhave wanted their sacer vates, having been too solid to rise to thetop by themselves, and not having been largely gifted with thetalent of catching hold of, and holding on tight to, whatever goodthings happened to be going— the foundation of the fortunes of somany noble families. But the world goes on its way, and the wheelturns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs, seem in afair way to get righted. And this present writer, having for manyyears of his life been a devout Brown-worshipper, and, moreover,having the honour of being nearly connected with an eminentlyrespectable branch of the great Brown family, is anxious, so far asin him lies, to help the wheel over, and throw his stone on to thepile.
However, gentle reader, or simple reader, whicheveryou may be, lest you should be led to waste your precious time uponthese pages, I make so bold as at once to tell you the sort of folkyou'll have to meet and put up with, if you and I are to jog oncomfortably together. You shall hear at once what sort of folk theBrowns are— at least my branch of them; and then, if you don't likethe sort, why, cut the concern at once, and let you and I cry quitsbefore either of us can grumble at the other.
In the first place, the Browns are a fightingfamily. One may question their wisdom, or wit, or beauty, but abouttheir fight there can be no question. Wherever hard knocks of anykind, visible or invisible, are going; there the Brown who isnearest must shove in his carcass. And these carcasses, for themost part, answer very well to the characteristic propensity: theyare a squareheaded and snake-necked generation, broad in theshoulder, deep in the chest, and thin in the flank, carrying nolumber. Then for clanship, they are as bad as Highlanders; it isamazing the belief they have in one another. With them there isnothing like the Browns, to the third and fourth generation. “Bloodis thicker than water, ” is one of their pet sayings. They can't behappy unless they are always meeting one another. Never were suchpeople for family gatherings; which, were you a stranger, orsensitive, you might think had better not have been gatheredtogether. For during the whole time of their being together theyluxuriate in telling one another their minds on whatever subjectturns up; and their minds are wonderfully antagonistic, and alltheir opinions are downright beliefs. Till you've been among themsome time and understand them, you can't think but that they arequarrelling. Not a bit of it. They love and respect one another tentimes the more after a good set family arguing bout, and go back,one to his curacy, another to his chambers, and another to hisregiment, freshened for work, and more than ever convinced that theBrowns are the height of company.
This family training, too, combined with their turnfor combativeness, makes them eminently quixotic. They can't letanything alone which they think going wrong. They must speak theirmind about it, annoying all easy-going folk, and spend their timeand money in having a tinker at it, however hopeless the job. It isan impossibility to a Brown to leave the most disreputable lame dogon the other side of a stile. Most other folk get tired of suchwork. The old Browns, with red faces, white whiskers, and baldheads, go on believing and fighting to a green old age. They havealways a crotchet going, till the old man with the scythe reaps andgarners them away for troublesome old boys as they are.
And the most provoking thing is, that no failuresknock them up, or make them hold their hands, or think you, or me,or other sane people in the right. Failures slide off them likeJuly rain off a duck's back feathers. Jem and his whole family turnout bad, and cheat them one week, and the next they are doing thesame thing for Jack; and when he goes to the treadmill, and hiswife and children to the workhouse, they will be on the lookout forBill to take his place.
However, it is time for us to get from the generalto the particular; so, leaving the great army of Browns, who arescattered over the whole empire on which the sun never sets, andwhose general diffusion I take to be the chief cause of thatempire's stability; let us at once fix our attention upon the smallnest of Browns in which our hero was hatched, and which dwelt inthat portion of the royal county of Berks which is called the Valeof White Horse.
Most of you have probably travelled down the GreatWestern Railway as far as Swindon. Those of you who did so withtheir eyes open have been aware, soon after leaving the Didcotstation, of a fine range of chalk hills running parallel with therailway on the left-hand side as you go down, and distant some twoor three miles, more or less, from the line. The highest point inthe range is the White Horse Hill, which you come in front of justbefore you stop at the Shrivenham station. If you love Englishscenery, and have a few hours to spare, you can't do better, thenext time you pass, than stop at the Farringdon Road or Shrivenhamstation, and make your way to that highest point. And those whocare for the vague old stories that haunt country-sides all aboutEngland, will not, if they are wise, be content with only a fewhours' stay; for, glorious as the view is, the neighbourhood is yetmore interesting for its relics of bygone times. I only know twoEnglish neighbourhoods thoroughly, and in each, within a circle offive miles, there is enough of interest and beauty to last anyreasonable man his life. I believe this to be the case almostthroughout the country, but each has a special attraction, and nonecan be richer than the one I am speaking of and going to introduceyou to very particularly, for on this subject I must be prosy; sothose that don't care for England in detail may skip thechapter.
O young England! young England! you who are borninto these racing railroad times, when there's a Great Exhibition,or some monster sight, every year, and you can get over a couple ofthousand miles of ground for three pound ten in a five-weeks'holiday, why don't you know more of your own birthplaces? You'reall in the ends of the earth, it seems to me, as soon as you getyour necks out of the educational collar, for midsummer holidays,long vacations, or what not— going round Ireland, with a returnticket, in a fortnight; dropping your copies of Tennyson on thetops of Swiss mountains; or pulling down the Danube in Oxfordracing boats. And when you get home for a quiet fortnight, you turnthe steam off, and lie on your backs in the paternal garden,surrounded by the last batch of books from Mudie's library, andhalf bored to death. Well, well! I know it has its good side. Youall patter French more or less, and perhaps German; you have seenmen and cities, no doubt, and have your opinions, such as they are,about schools of painting, high art, and all that; have seen thepictures of Dresden and the Louvre, and know the taste of sourkrout. All I say is, you don't know your own lanes and woods andfields. Though you may be choke-full of science, not one in twentyof you knows where to find the wood-sorrel, or bee-orchis, whichgrow in the next wood, or on the down three miles off, or what thebog-bean and wood-sage are good for. And as for the countrylegends, the stories of the old gable-ended farmhouses, the placewhere the last skirmish was fought in the civil wars, where theparish butts stood, where the last highwayman turned to bay, wherethe last ghost was laid by the parson, they're gone out of datealtogether.
Now, in my time, when we got home by the old coach,which put us down at the cross-roads with our boxes, the first dayof the holidays, and had been driven off by the family coachman,singing “Dulce Domum” at the top of our voices, there we were,fixtures, till black Monday came round. We had to cut out our ownamusements within a walk or a ride of home. And so we got to knowall the country folk and their ways and songs and stories by heart,and went over the fields and woods and hills, again and again, tillwe made friends of them all. We were Berkshire, or Gloucestershire,or Yorkshire boys; and you're young cosmopolites, belonging to a