: The Saturday Magazine No. 66 July 1833 by Various - Welsh periodicals 19th century

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INDEX TO NOTES 381

THOMAS HUGHES.

Thomas Hughes is a native of the royal county of Berkshire, England. From the nursery windows of the old farmhouse in Uffington, where he was born, in 1823, he delighted in looking out on that famous White Horse Hill which he describes in the opening chapters of "Tom Brown's School Days."

His father was such an English squire as he represents Tom's father to be, and his grandfather was vicar of the parish, and therefore a man of a good deal of local influence. When a child, young Hughes must have become familiar with the old parish church, which dates almost from the time of William the Conqueror, and which has within it some Roman brickwork which carries one back to the days when Agricola's legions were building walled towns in Britain.

Thus the lad's earliest recollections would naturally be of these two landmarks--the ivy-grown church, with its twenty and more generations buried round it, and the great chalk hill whose rudely carved White Horse can be seen gleaming in the sunshine full ten miles away, just as it did when Alfred the Great cut it to commemorate his victory over the Northmen a thousand years ago.

Thomas had a brother George, who was a little older than he, and who was his opposite in many respects. From him he learned many lessons which helped to shape his after life. George was quick to turn his hand to anything, and a lover of all out-door sports; if they had a spice of danger in them, so much the better. Thomas, on the other hand, was naturally both awkward and timid; the sound of a gun frightened him; and a pet pony soon found that, while George was his master, he was Thomas's, and meant to keep so. Thomas was ashamed of what he called his two left hands, with which he never seemed to get the right hold of anything the first time. He was still more ashamed of his timidity. That feeling of fear he could not prevent. Eventually, however, he did better; he so mastered it that he could bravely face what he feared, so making duty stand him in the stead of that mere physical courage, which is often but another name for insensibility to danger.

When he reached the age of seven he went to Twyford to school. Here he found how easy it is to get a nickname, and how hard it is to get rid of it. One of his first lessons related to Greek literature and to the history of Cadmus, who was said to have "first carried letters from Asia to Greece." Instead of asking the question in the book, the master demanded, "What was Cadmus?" This new way of questioning disconcerted the class, who were prepared to tell who Cadmus was, but not what he was. But young Hughes, remembering the letter-carrier at Uffington, suddenly jumped up and shouted out, "I can tell! Cadmus was a postman, sir!" From that day the boy was christened "Cadmus" by his companions, a name which, for convenience' sake, was soon shortened to "Cad,"--a particularly aggravating abbreviation, since in England a "cad" is the exact opposite of a gentleman. Then all sorts of ingenious and mischievous changes were rung on it until poor "Cadmus" was in a fair way of being driven wild with torment. Wherever he went the walls echoed with the jeering cry. But luckily for him his brother George happened to hear a big fellow teasing the lad, and rushing up with clenched fist and blazing eyes, thrashed the bully so soundly that after that Thomas enjoyed entire immunity from the objectionable title.

After about three years at Twyford, the two brothers were sent to the school at Rugby, then under the mastership of Doctor Arnold, who proved himself to be the ablest teacher in England; not because he taught his boys more than any other educator, but because more than any other he awakened in them the true spirit of manhood. "Tom Brown's School Days" is a record of the eight happy years that the lads spent under the Doctor's influence. From Rugby they went to Oxford, where Thomas Hughes graduated at Oriel College in 1845. The timid "Cadmus" of Twyford not only passed through Rugby with credit to himself in foot-ball, in Greek verses, and in the manly art of self-defence, but he got a "Double First" at Oxford--that is, the highest honors in the mathematics and the classics--and was elected captain of the 'Varsity Crew and captain of the University Eleven at cricket as well.

It was while young Hughes was at Oriel that the corn law agitation reached its height. A heavy duty on all imported grain had made bread so dear that thousands of English workmen, with their families, were brought to the verge of starvation. John Bright earnestly espoused their cause and urged Parliament to repeal a tax that enriched a few at the expense of a suffering multitude. Elliott, the "Corn Law Rhymer," stirred the feelings of the masses with his impassioned appeals in verse, so that all over the country hollow-cheeked artisans were repeating the lines,--

"England! what for mine and me, What hath bread-tax done for thee?

Cursed thy harvest, cursed thy land, Hunger-stung thy skill'd right hand."

Thomas Hughes became a convert to the Liberal movement, which shortly after succeeded in repealing a tariff that had been the cause of such wide-spread misery. From that day his sympathies have always been with those classes who are called to earn the least and endure the most; and when in 1848 he was admitted to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, London, he had got the name of being a radical and a reformer in politics--a name, then, rather more dreadful to steady-going, conservative English country gentlemen of the "Squire Brown" type than that of mad dog.

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